When Tragedy Strikes, Who Gets Your Most Precious Cargo? (Modern Family)

On last night's absolutely hilarious episode of 'Modern Family' ("Someone to Watch Over Lily"), Cameron and Mitchell spied on Mitchell's family members in order to determine who would get their daughter, Lily, in the event they were both deceased ("God forbid!"). First, Mitchell and Cam went over the Mitchell's sister's Claire house. After Claire's husband, Phil, set the kitchen on fire, her daughter Haley called her "the worst mom in the world," and her daughter Alex barges in the kitchen wondering why no one heard her screaming while she was locked in the garage for the past 20 minutes, it was pretty clear that the Dunphys were out of the running as Lily's potential guardians. Mitchell was set on his father and young step-mother Gloria, but Cameron had his reservations about Papa Jay. Eventually, the pair settled on Jay and Gloria, leading Gloria to shout with glee that Lily was finally hers and taking Lily upstairs to see her "new room."

In addition to making my husband and I laugh until our sides hurt and we had tears coming out of our eyes, it got us thinking: we have not yet written our wills or issued directives on what would happen to our children in the event something happened to us. Sure, we've discussed it plenty of times, but we've never come to a final conclusion. We have someone in mind who would be the perfect guardian, but we've never finalized that decision with each other, let alone talked to the family to see how they feel about the situation. 

Considering I'm a lawyer and have done pro bono work putting together wills and powers of attorney for others, it's really sloppy of me to not have drafted wills for my Pop Culture Dad and myself. Honestly, I started the drafts nearly three years ago, when I was pregnant with Pop Culture Toddler. However, here I am pregnant with Pop Culture Kid #2, and we have yet to put anything final on paper. Shame, shame!

This weekend is a long holiday weekend, and as they say, "There's no time like the present." In between cleaning out the guest room to transform it into a princess paradise for Pop Culture Toddler and otherwise just getting our house in order, Pop Culture Dad and I need to spend the weekend getting our affairs in order. I plan on making sure we carve out some time to do our wills (which, honestly, shouldn't take very long) and then, once we declare with certainty that we do in fact want the guardians we originally discussed, give them a call to see how they feel about the subject. There's really no reason we shouldn't have done this sooner, and there is no good reason to delay it any further.

So how about the rest of you -- are your affairs in order? If not, what's holding you back? Is it a sense of laziness/disorganization, like what happened with us? Or is it more of an issue of really not knowing who you would trust with your children? Or is it something else entirely?

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(image courtesy of ABC.com)
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1 comments:

  1. Suzanne said...

    It took us eight years and our first vacation away without the kids to get our butts moving on this. I was mad at myself for waiting that long, but it was entirely because we couldn't decide on guardians (believe me, the money part wasn't hard, since there's not much in the way of assets right now to divvy up!). And it wasn't that my husband and I couldn't agree on who we wanted, but we didn't feel anyone was suitable. No one would sacrifice as much as we had to do everything we wanted for our children. We ultimately "settled" on close relatives, and all I can do now is hope it never has to happen. Good luck with your decisions -- I guess the best thing to do is just to do it.

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