This is a common situation and and is done by creating an irrevocalbe
trust for each child. See a lawyer and have her draw up a will with
this type of provision. (Now)

<<whoever becomes their legal guardians>
You might want to also have a will, specifying who *you* want to become
the guardians.

John Cowart

My wife and I want to plan for the unlikely yet still possible even that
we both die while we have minor children. Right now we have three kids,
ages 6 mo, 20 mo, and 3 years, so it will be quite a while until their
adults. What we would want is a mechanism so that should we both die,
our assets (retirement savings and proceeds from the sale of our house
plus misc cash/assets) would go into perhaps some sort of trust fund,
available to pay the legitimate expenses for our kids, to whoever
becomes their legal guardians.

Obviously we'll want to see financial/legal advisors to take care of
this, but I'd like to know in advance what options are available so we
can think about them. I'd hope there are some tax free/efficient
mechanisms for doing this. The bulk of our retirement savings are in
IRAs (401k rollover and SEP account for the vast majority, smaller
amounts in Roth and Traditional). We're in Maryland.

It's something we obviously hope never has to be used, but it's good to
have it taken care of.

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Chris Smolinski
Black Cat Systems
http://www.blackcatsystems.com