There's no easy answer. You just gotta talk with close friends about it.

Taking care of more children would be difficult for my wife and I but I would strongly consider it if we were approached by one of our friends or family members about it.

Our life with 5 kids is already full but we are stable, love each other and have the resources, both emotional and financial to provide for more.

We would have to change our life and make sacrifices but that's what love is all about.

This doesn't really answer your question, it's more about taking care of someone else's children than finding someone to take care of your own. But if you are thinking about these things the other side is that you need to ask yourself if you could make the sacrifice to take in more kids yourself.

My criteria for choosing who would take care of my children are simple:

1. their family is emotionally capable. 2. the family is willing - including both parents and any children they already have.

We're talking about an already incredibly bad situation. My goal wouldn't be to give my kids everything they would have if they still had their parents. It would be to minimize the risk of more horrible things happening to them - abuse, abject poverty etc.

Agreed. And remember that the family taking on the kids doesn't necessarily need to be able to support them financially. Your will should designate sufficient funds to a trust account (either through your savings if you have enough, and/or through life insurance) to care for your kids through childhood. Plus ideally some extra for the people taking on this huge responsibility. Otherwise everything iamthepieman said.

I'm in a similar situation. The other members of both sides of our family are all either flaky, dirt poor, or too old to take care of our kids.

And one of our children is autistic and will likely need long-term care when she's an adult. Maybe one of our other children will step up when the time comes, but I can't count on that.

My plan is to live forever.

Dirt poor shouldn't be a problem. Buy life insurance.

In the Roman Catholic tradition, this problem is solved with godparents. I'm not Catholic (and I don't have kids yet), but the model seems to make sense. Forgive me for stepping way beyond the bounds of "internet stranger's business" but if your close friends' lives are so full that they would not care for your children if you became incapacitated, you need better friends.

I come from the RC tradition as well, though we didn't baptize our children.

I can think of exactly two sets of people in our diverse set of friends (and they are good friends) whom we might ask for this kind of consideration, but really, even both of them are problematic for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of our friendship.

I strongly disagree with that view. I don't have children of my own and while I would open the door at 3 am to take friends in (or heck a neighbor) while we get things sorted out taking on children is a major life disrupting experience.

So yes saying no would be selfish, assuming that any of your friends would have their lives completely disrupted just because you have children seems quite a bit more selfish.

The point is that throughout history, raising children are considered the point of life, not trophies that are otherwise a distraction from vacations and toys.

Well, no. Traditionally care for those kids goes to the extended family, not the friends. Sneering at friends who won't take in children is not something that you can support in terms of an argument of tradition.

I don't think it would solve the problem you are responding to, which is that the person doesn't know anyone they feel are capable of taking care of their children. Having a formal title for the role isn't going to help them find someone for the role.

The key to cutting through this incredibly difficult question is to remember : at that point, you're out of the picture and whatever hopes and dreams you had for the kids now come a distant second place to finding the best way forward for them in a horrific situation. Your kids are going to be messed up if your gone, no question. At that point the focus should be on 'loving family' first and everything else distant second. If that means another city, state or country,so be it. If that means them living in a family with less money, so be it. If you vote for the purple party and they vote for the yellow part, so be it. Your kids will end up voting yellow but at least they will be loved and supported.

Find a loving family, they are the answer. And make sure the life insurance is sorted out.

Do you have any friends with kids of their own? We found in our planning that the people who had kids of similar age to ours were the best choice. They're already dealing with "kid stuff" and, other than finances, adding more kids doesn't totally change the nature of their life.

Make sure to have life insurance, and have your lawyer set it up as a trust for the child's well-being. You can designate someone other than the caretaker of the child to be the trustee of the trust if you want to decentralize responsibility, though in our case we found that unnecessary. In our case, we recognized that additional kids would mean our designees need a bigger house, so we took a very liberal view of what constitutes the children's well-being.

Also keep in mind that you may revise your choices over time. We reasoned that her friend is the best choice for this 5 years, but when our daughter gets a bit older, we can reevaluate and see who in our then-social-circle is the ideal.

Find a friend in the same situation as you, and agree to be each other's back-up parents. Get some term-life insurance in a fairly large amount to go in trust to the kids if your spouse dies; that will cover the expenses, and term-life is pretty darn cheap.

I'm in a similar situation and trying to make those same decisions. We ended up picking the ex-wife of a family member. Our immediate family did not fit our criteria and after we talked with her it seems like the best choice.

However, we are still struggling with how to distribute the life insurance in this case. Currently, she would get it all, but I think setting aside x% for education for each kid is worth considering (maybe y% for after college graduation). I realize someone taking in someone else's kids will incur some costs, so I think they should get 'something' - with two more kids, they may need to upgrade their house.

Thoughts on %'s or amounts?

Don't set aside money for education, that will just interfere with financial aid. No parents means no income means free school

My parents made wills that nominated close friends as guardians for us kids. The friends nominated my parents as guardians for their kids. There would have been enough value in either house to cover any extra costs of looking after the orphaned set of kids.

> who should take care of the kids if something happens to both myself and my spouse

I would expect this to be a very rare occurrence. Most likely is an accident that kills one of the parents only, but in most scenarios where both parents are together, they would have the children with them. I guess it's always important to plan for risks, even if they are rare, if the consequences are very bad - 'high threat, low probability' is the military term, I believe?