After adding a baby to your family, life gets crazy in the most wonderful of ways. You have a lot of new tasks on your to-do list to take care of your new bundle of joy. Those tasks probably center around feedings, laundry, and diapers. 
However, you must also do something else, which is just as important as all the hands-on care you’re offering. You need to make an estate plan to ensure that your new child will be provided for no matter what happens to you.
Here are a few key reasons why making an estate plan is so important once you’ve become a parent.
You’ll want to name your child’s guardian yourself
If something happens to you when your child is still a minor, someone is going to have to take care of your child. If there is a surviving parent, that parent will generally become the sole guardian. However, if both parents pass away or if you are a single parent, then things become more complicated.
In this situation, you likely will want to be the one to choose who raises your child. You can do that if you make an estate plan. You can carefully consider who you would trust to raise your child, who shares your values, and who would be in a good position to take care of your son or daughter until adulthood.
If you have not made an estate plan, you won’t be able to express your preferences for what should happen to your children. These important decisions will need to be made after you are gone, in the midst of tragedy.
This can create many problems. Your loved ones could become involved in conflict over who should care for your children. This could lead to a custody battle at the precise time when your child needs stability and an extended family. It also creates a longer period of uncertainty for your child.
Unfortunately, the court might appoint someone other than the person you would have preferred as your child’s guardian. Sadly, you won’t be able to fix this situation at this point. This is why it’s so important to have your plans in place before something happens to you. As soon as you have a child, you should make an estate plan so you don’t lose the chance to specify who should raise your child if you can’t.
You can ensure your child will be provided for
It is very expensive to raise a child. A recent Lending Tree study found the average cost to raise a child until age 18 is $237,482. It can place a substantial financial burden on your loved ones to make them responsible for covering these costs if something happens to you.
When you make an estate plan, you can take steps to ensure that your child is going to be provided for financially even if you pass away before they become an adult. This could involve purchasing a life insurance policy that provides a death benefit. The death benefit can pay out the money your child needs throughout their childhood and even beyond into college.
The sooner you purchase a life insurance policy, the cheaper it will be in most situations since life insurance premiums tend to increase as you get older. You also can make sure you get a policy before developing any pre-existing conditions that might prevent you from qualifying for coverage.
You can take control over the inheritance you leave for your children
Finally, you should make an estate plan when you have a child because doing so will give you much more control over how your child receives any inheritance that you’ve left behind.
You likely want to transfer your money and property to your children. However, if you do that, they could inherit the money with no strings attached at the age of 18 unless you use the right estate planning tools to prevent that from happening. You may not think it’s a great idea to just give an 18-year-old unlimited access to all of the money or property that you are leaving to them, and making an estate plan enables you to opt out of doing that.
Instead, you can use tools like a trust to specify who should manage the assets you’re leaving for your children before they become adults. You can also provide instructions with your trust that limit how much money your children can access at once or require your kids to accomplish certain milestones before gaining access to funds. You could even limit what the money is used for, requiring it to be used for education or the purchase of a home.
By using estate planning tools to take control over the inheritance you leave to your kids, you can make sure this money is used wisely to provide them with a more secure quality of life.
These are just some of the many reasons why parents need an estate plan. We can help you make your plan and use the right tools to care for your children even if you pass on. Call (916) 437-3500 today to find out more.
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