After a hard-won battle to gain sole custody of your child(ren), the last thing you want is for your child to end up in an unfit parent’s custody. That can happen if you do not make careful arrangements to provide for custody or guardianship of your minor children.
No one wants to think about death, but what’s worse is not taking action and worrying that your child will be placed with the very parent you fought so hard to protect them from. Here at Averett Family Law, we’ve seen this happen far too many times and in response, we’ve developed a custody protection estate plan to not only make your wishes for your child’s care known, but provide a mechanism to defend those wishes, even in the event of your untimely death.
How may we help?
Protecting Your Child(ren)
This plan is not guaranteed, but the Custody Protection Estate Plan helps insure your wishes for your child with the following steps:
- Including documentation of ways in which the other parent has acted inconsistently with his/her constitution right to parent his/her child and why the non-custodial parent should not have custody.
- Including documentation showing the substantial positive relationship your child(ren) have with the person you would like to grant custody after your death.
- Purchasing of a term life policy (with the length/term of the policy being the number of years until the youngest child reaches 18) for which your approved caregiver is the beneficiary with the instructions that the policy benefits are to be used to litigate custody with the other parent and if that is not necessary, it is to be used to support your child(ren).
You can rest easy knowing that you have done your best to ensure that your children will be with someone you trust and with whom they have a healthy, loving relationship if you should die prior to their 18th birthdays.
This estate plan is not guaranteed, but it gives the person you want to have custody the means to fight the other parent for custody and, once the other parent knows your chosen guardian has the means to litigate custody, the unfit parent is more likely to back down from the custody battle.