Child Protection Plan
Your kids raised by the people you chose. Not by a judge’s best guess.
A will names a guardian for after the documents are found and a court has read them. A Child Protection Plan also covers the first night and the first phone call, which is when it actually matters.
The gap most plans leave
A will does not answer the door at nine at night.
If you are the parent of children who count on you, this is the part of planning that comes first. Not the house, not the accounts. Who has your children, and how fast, if you cannot get to them.
Most parents assume a will covers it. A will names a guardian, which is genuinely important, but it only operates once it has been located and put in front of a court. Here is what a will alone leaves open:
- Your children are picked up by whoever is nearest, which may mean Child Protective Services, while somebody hunts for your documents.
- A judge who has never met your family decides who raises them, working from whatever information reaches the courtroom.
- The person you would never have chosen is the one who steps forward, and nobody there knows that you would not have chosen them.
- Whatever you leave lands in your children's hands the day they turn eighteen, outright, with nothing built in to protect it.
None of that is meant to frighten you. It is meant to be fixable, and it is, in a single working session.
What you actually get
The Child Protection Plan
Legal documents
Guardians named properly in your estate plan, including alternates, so there is a clear, valid answer to the question a court will eventually have to ask.
Short-term guardians
People who live close enough to be there in an hour. The person you want raising your children for the next twenty years may be six states away, and the first night cannot wait for a flight.
Written instructions
Plain directions for the people who show up first, including who to call, who is authorized, and, just as importantly, who is not.
An ID card for your wallet
So the information travels with you. If you are in an accident, the people helping you do not have to guess about the kids at home or wait for a filing cabinet to be opened.
Protection for what you leave
Assets held in trust for your children and released on terms you set, rather than handed over in a lump sum on a birthday.
A plan that stays current
Guardians move, relationships change, and children arrive. A plan that is never revisited quietly stops describing your family.
We build this in an Estate Planning Session, working through your family rather than through a form. If your children have special needs, the same session covers planning that protects their benefits.
Where it usually goes wrong
Naming a guardian is easy. Naming one that works is not.
Only naming the long-term guardian
The long-term choice is the one everyone thinks about. The gap is the first twenty-four hours, and that is the gap that actually gets children placed with strangers.
Naming a couple, jointly
Couples separate, and one of them may not be who you had in mind. Naming people rather than a household keeps the decision yours.
Never telling anyone
A guardian who does not know they were named, and documents nobody can find, are close to no plan at all. The people involved should know, and should have said yes.
Common questions
What parents actually ask
We already have a will that names a guardian. Is that not enough?
A will is a good start, and it is not the whole answer. A will speaks after it has been found, filed, and read by a court, which takes days at minimum. It says nothing about who has authority over your children this evening. That gap between the emergency and the courtroom is what a Child Protection Plan is built to cover.
We cannot agree on who to name.
That is normal, and it is the reason a lot of parents stall for years. It usually helps to stop looking for one perfect person and instead separate the roles: who comes right away, who raises them long term, and who manages the money, which does not have to be the same person as either of the others. Splitting the question makes it answerable.
Will we offend the family members we do not choose?
Sometimes, if it is discovered the wrong way. It lands much better as a conversation you had than as a document someone reads later. We can help you think through how to say it, and there is a place in the plan to explain your reasoning in your own words.
Our kids are teenagers. Has the window closed?
No. A sixteen-year-old still needs a legal guardian, and the money question becomes more pressing, not less, as eighteen gets closer. Without a plan, the whole of what you leave is handed to them on their birthday. With one, it is held and released on terms you chose.
Does this replace an estate plan, or add to it?
It is part of one. We include a Child Protection Plan with every estate plan we build for a family with minor children, because for parents it is the piece that matters most and the piece most likely to be missing. If you already have a plan from another firm, we can look at what it does and does not cover.
What does it cost?
You get a flat fee quoted before any work starts. The pricing page sets out our tiers and what sits in each of them.
Take this one off the list.
Fifteen minutes on the phone, no charge. Most parents have been meaning to do this for years, and it turns out to be a shorter conversation than they expected.