Every since I was pregnant, we have said to our financial planner at our annual meeting that this is the year that we plan to create our will. By the time our son was 6, our financial planner must not have believed us, but he was kind enough not to laugh when we made that promise each January.

This went on my list because I felt it was a necessary task. It’s the responsible thing to do, right? Plan for your demise and make sure your loved ones are cared for? That’s what grownups do. But wow, it’s depressing to think about your own mortality. My husband and I made plans to meet with an estate attorney and we had already discussed the most important thing: who would wanted to raise Eli. We both have one sibling, so it was a toss up between Husband’s brother and my sister. However, Sister won out because she has a child about Son’s age who we see regularly. Both our kids are only children and often act as brothers, not cousins. So in my mind, it made the most sense. Husband’s brother is an amazing back up though. He has raised two girls who are the best nieces I could have inherited. Niece #1 and #2 are kind, thoughtful, smart, funny, and beautiful. I’ve seen them grow up before my eyes and I cannot be prouder to be their aunt. And beyond siblings, we had some stellar backups. We are lucky to have a group of close friends who are all great with children. I would be happy to have any of these friends raise my son. While I hope I actually get to be the one to raise my son with Husband, I do hope that if I pass away, ALL of these amazing people will stay in my son’s life because he will be the better for knowing and loving all of them. I know I am.

But back to the debate between Sister and Brother – I think the argument that swayed my husband to agree to Sister was that she has an extra bedroom.

There is much more to creating a will though than assigning a guardian for your child. You actually have to pick who gets to make end of life decisions for you. This was never something I considered. We gave that decision to Brother. While I do not expect it would be an easy decision for anyone, I felt it would be particularly difficult for my sister to have to carry that burden.

So to review, Brother gets to pull the plug, Sister gets to raise our child.

Beyond that, the other major decision was when will Son get to inherit everything? If you don’t create a trust, they inherit everything upon turning 18. The attorney said that some people are fine with that but cautioned us to think about how we would have been at age 18 if we inherited money? It is hard to predict how Son will be at age 18, but currently he’s very impulsive and it’s hard to believe that he wouldn’t spend his entire inheritance on Legos if he was able to.  So we created a trust so he’ll get some money around the time others need for college, house/marriage, and kids.

Other than that, everything was just legal language and we did a bunch of signing and it was done. It wasn’t the most fun task on my list, but I’m glad we did it.