I highly recommend getting a book on wills from Nolo Press.  I got "Make your own living trust" (or something like that), which comes with a CD of forms and step by step instructions.

We did not make our own trust, we had a lawyer draw it up.  But the clear, simple workbook had led us through all sorts of issues that would never have occurred to us, that we needed to discuss and make decisions about.  By the time we got to the lawyer's office we were prepared and knew which questions we needed to focus on.  

I definitely think the lawyer was worth it.  But for maybe $20 we got a great education, plus we probably saved a couple of hours of expensive lawyer time.  Awesome book.

But we are really good about this. My mother's affairs were a MESS when she died and I was her executor. I would never want to inflict that on anyone else. Plus, with the kids being so little, I just don't like to take any chances.

We are insured up the wazoo and had a really good estate lawyer do our wills and POAs. We also have advanced care directives. We actually took care of all this when I was pregnant with our older son and had the wills drawn up so that they would work if we had more children.

I have friends and relations with young children

and we have not gotten this done.  The subject came up at church the other day, about making sure your kids would be raised by someone who shares your values.

and had them notarized.  We checked in with a lawyer who said that since we don't have a large estate (ha!  That's an understatement!) this is just fine for us.  Living wills, advanced directives, the whole nine yards including guardianship of the kids.  My sister holds duplicate originals (we made two sets of everything) and said it was "weird" to hold my will in her hands.  I told her it was weirder to hold it in my own hands.

It feels good to have it done, though.

Plenty of life insurance, though. We just figure the laws of inheritance are what we want anyway-- if we both die, everything goes to DS, and if DS dies, we really don't care who gets what. We talked to my sister and her husband about raising DS in the event of our untimely demise, and she's very cool with that, and DH's sibs and family likely wouldn't fight it (hell, we can't even get MIL to babysit).

I don't get weirded out by planning for death. I supposed I should put this all in some official document at some point, but as long as the life insurance on everyone is paid up, my mind is at ease.

who will raise our children if we didn't have it in a legal document.  We subscribed to DH's legal benefit and had an attorney draw up all the wills (including who would raise our minor children), living trust, and all of that.

We didn't know what we were doing, and the attorney was terrible at explaining.  I think the Nolo Press book is a great idea.  Maybe we'll do that when we decide to update everything.

I would say that belief in the courts to do the right thing is a little naive.  Don't assume your chosen person would get custody of your minor children unless you have it in a legal document.  What if a a legal nightmare ensues and your beloved child(ren) end up in foster care?  It might work out in the end, but shuffling would be so traumatic for children who have already suffered the loss of both parents.  

I rarely pitch a fit to insist that something get done, but I did in order to get wills and guardianship and life insurance worked out before ds was born. Dh was dragging his feet, but no way would I want this to not be worked out by us in the event of a tragedy.

So we have guardianship worked out, and the money stuff worked out. I ran our guardianship plan (dh's sister) by my mom so that she wouldn't feel bad or surprised. She readily agreed that she and my dad were too old to be named guardians - too high of a risk that ds would lose them while still a minor (if he were to lose us).

When ds is a mid teen, we'll do another guardianship plan, to, for example, allow him to stay in his high school if something were to happen to us.

The will that we've not yet completed puts everything into a trust for DS (currently 3) and he gets interest payments only until he's 65. I figure that way he can subsidize any lifestyle he wants.  If he wants to be an artist and it won't pay all the bills-- he's subsidized. My best friend (who is a trustfund baby herself) thought this was just terrible.  I like knowing he'll really be taken care of and that he won't be one of those kids who blows it all in a year.  He can take money out of the trust only for education and medical expenses prior to 65.

I've learned that not only is it important to have a will/trust etc. You have to keep updating it over time...

My dad died in 2002, recently my unmarried aunt (his sister) died and some of her estate still named my dad as a beneficary. This has meant death certificates and notarized documents and many delays to get it corrected. It would have been much easier for her to remove his name- but I bet she forgot that he was listed.

We are making changes to the guardianship for our kids now, as our original choice is no longer in a position to take our children.  sigh.

Now, our children are 21 and 18 years old, so we dodged the bullet . . . .

in 5 months back in 2000-2001, we drew up wills and got hefty life insurance policies on both of us.  Our son was 2 then.  Since that time we've added a second son.

We're REALLY glad we got large life insurance policies then, because in the intervening 7 years we've both been diagnosed with autoimmune disorders and insurance rates would be horrifically high.