If you and your spouse both die tomorrow, do you know who raises your children?

If you don’t have a guardianship nomination in place, the answer is simple and terrifying: a Michigan probate judge who has never met your family decides. Under MCL 700.5204, the court appoints a guardian based on the child’s best interests – but the judge is making that decision without knowing your family dynamics, your values, your parenting philosophy, or why you’d never in a million years want your brother-in-law raising your kids.

This blog isn’t about the planning tools. It’s not about trusts or wills or documents. Those are covered elsewhere. This is about what actually happens – in Michigan courtrooms, in real families, in real children’s lives – when parents don’t plan. And the consequences are worse than most parents imagine.

Consequence #1: A Judge Picks Who Raises Your Children

Here’s the process no parent wants to think about. When both parents die without a guardianship nomination, someone – a grandparent, a sibling, an aunt, sometimes Child Protective Services – petitions the probate court for guardianship of the children. If more than one person petitions, there’s a contested hearing. The judge evaluates each petitioner based on statutory factors and makes a decision.

What the judge knows: what’s in the petition, what each side’s attorney argues, and whatever limited investigation the court can conduct.

What the judge doesn’t know: why you’d never want your sister’s husband around your children unsupervised. Which grandparent shares your values on education, religion, and discipline. Which friend has been like a second parent to your kids since birth. The complicated family history that makes one sibling a perfect choice and another a disaster.

The court means well. But they’re guessing – and they’re guessing about the most important decision that will ever be made about your children’s lives.

“Under MCL 700.5204, a Michigan probate court appoints a guardian based on the minor’s best interests. But without a nomination from the parents, the court has no starting point – and every family member with an opinion becomes a potential petitioner, turning your children’s future into a courtroom debate.”

Consider what this actually looks like. Two sets of grandparents – one in Macomb County, one in Oakland County – both petition for guardianship. Each believes they’re the right choice. Each hires an attorney. The children, who just lost both parents, are placed in temporary care while the court sorts it out. Months pass. The kids are living in limbo, shuttled between relatives, pulled out of their school, separated from their friends – all while the adults in their lives are fighting over them in court.

This isn’t a hypothetical. It happens in Michigan probate courts regularly. And it’s entirely preventable.

Consequence #2: Your Kids Get Their Full Inheritance at 18 – With Zero Guardrails

Without a trust, Michigan law requires assets left to minors to be distributed when they turn 18. No restrictions. No guidance. No structure. No one watching over how the money is spent.

Think about that for a moment. Think about the life insurance payout you’re carrying – $250,000, $500,000, maybe more. That money exists to replace your income, fund your children’s education, keep a roof over their heads, and provide for them until they can provide for themselves.

Now imagine handing that entire sum to an 18-year-old.

Think about what you would have done with $500,000 at 18. Think about the friends who would have suddenly appeared. The “investment opportunities.” The cars, the trips, the decisions that felt urgent at 18 and look reckless at 30.

“Many Michigan parents don’t realize that their life insurance – the financial safety net they’re paying premiums on every month – will be handed to their children in a lump sum at 18 if there’s no trust in place. The protection they’re paying for today becomes an unguided windfall that statistically gets spent within a few years.”

An 18-year-old with a large, unstructured inheritance isn’t just at risk of making bad decisions. They’re a target – for financial predators, for manipulative relationships, for well-meaning friends with terrible advice. The money you spent a career earning and carefully insuring can be gone before your child finishes their first year of college.

Consequence #3: The Guardianship Process Costs a Fortune – and It Comes Out of Your Children’s Money

Contested guardianship isn’t just emotionally devastating. It’s expensive. And every dollar spent on the legal fight is a dollar that should have gone to your children.

Initial contested guardianship proceedings in Michigan typically cost $5,000-$10,000+ just to get started – and that’s per side. If both sets of grandparents hire attorneys, the children’s future inheritance is funding a legal battle the parents could have prevented with a single document.

But the initial fight is just the beginning. Once a guardian is appointed, the court doesn’t simply step away. If the children have significant assets – life insurance proceeds, inheritance, savings – the court will likely appoint a conservator to manage those assets. Conservatorship means ongoing court oversight with annual costs typically running $10,000-$15,000 per year (with a conservative baseline of $5,000-$10,000 per year depending on complexity).

That oversight continues until each child turns 18. If your youngest is 3 years old, that’s 15 years of conservatorship costs – potentially $150,000-$225,000 in legal and administrative fees consumed by a process that exists only because no plan was in place.

“Every dollar a Michigan family spends on contested guardianship and conservatorship court oversight is a dollar that should have gone to their children’s education, their activities, their housing, and their future. The system designed to protect children ends up consuming the resources meant to support them.”

Add in the legal fees from family members fighting over custody, potential appeals, guardian ad litem costs, and mandatory court accountings – and the total can easily approach or exceed $100,000 before the oldest child reaches adulthood. All from an estate that was supposed to provide for the children. All preventable.

Consequence #4: Family Relationships Shatter – Permanently

Nothing fractures families faster than a custody fight over children after parents die unexpectedly. Siblings stop speaking. Grandparents take sides. In-laws who were cordial for decades become adversaries in a courtroom. The grief that should bring a family together instead tears it apart.

And the children are caught in the middle.

They’ve just lost their parents – the two people they depended on most in the world. Now the adults around them are arguing about who gets them, where they’ll live, which school they’ll attend, and how the money will be managed. The children hear the arguments. They feel the tension. They understand, even when no one tells them directly, that the people who are supposed to love them most can’t agree on what’s best for them.

A guardianship nomination doesn’t guarantee zero conflict – family dynamics are complicated, and emotions run high after a tragedy. But it gives the court clear direction. It tells the judge: “We thought about this. We chose this person. Here’s who we trust with our children.” That clarity makes contested proceedings far less likely and gives the nominated guardian the strongest possible position if anyone objects.

The absence of that nomination is what turns grief into warfare.

Frequently Asked Questions About Estate Planning With Minor Children

The Fix Is Simpler – and Cheaper – Than You Think

Every consequence described above – the courtroom custody battles, the unguarded inheritance at 18, the six-figure conservatorship costs, the shattered family relationships – is preventable. And the solution costs a fraction of what the problems cost.

A comprehensive will-based estate plan ($1,500-$2,500) or a trust-based estate plan ($2,500-$5,500) handles everything: a guardianship nomination that tells the court exactly who you want raising your children, a trust that controls when and how your children receive their inheritance, financial management provisions that eliminate the need for court-supervised conservatorship, and a clear expression of your wishes that dramatically reduces the likelihood of family conflict.

You choose who raises your kids. You choose when and how they get their inheritance – at 25, at 30, in stages, with conditions. You eliminate the court process. You protect your family from turning on each other during the worst moment of their lives.

At Boroja, Bernier & Associates, we help Michigan families throughout the state create estate plans that protect their children – not just on paper, but in practice. Our attorneys understand that for parents with minor children, estate planning isn’t about assets – it’s about the people who matter most. With offices in Shelby Township, Troy, Ann Arbor, and Lansing, we make it easy for Michigan families to get this done.

The best time to plan was before you had kids. The second best time is today.

To schedule a consultation with the Michigan estate planning attorneys at Boroja, Bernier & Associates, call (586) 991-7611.