Guardian:

People often ask me the difference between a guardian and a trustee. I’ve seen wills in which -- and most of those are mutual wills, that is to say where the husband has the will and the wife has the will. And typically the wife leaves everything, if she passes away first, to the husband, and the husband leaves everything typically to the wife. But you have the question of the children. Whether or not these children are minors or whether or not they are young people, many times there’s a concern about whether or not these children are going to be properly taken care of.

What do you do? In your will not only do you name each of the surviving spouses respectively as the executors of the other’s estate. but you name guardians of the person for your children, meaning somebody to take care of the child, live in their home, watch out for their education, and you name another person or maybe the same person as the trustee.

The trustee to do what? To take care of the money and the property that that child otherwise cannot take care of because either they’re too young or they’re just simply not able to take care of finances. So a guardian is someone who takes care of the person. The trustee takes care of the money.

Many times you do name the same person for both tasks, but sometimes you find in your family, let’s say, that your sister Susie would be great with kids but, boy, she would spend the money like you can’t believe. On the other hand, you might find that your brother Joe would be terrible with kids but he might be just fine for the money because he’s a CPA. Those are the considerations.