Sometime here I would like to share some of the goals I had in mind for myself and our family this year. I didn't do a full post about "New Year's Resolutions," but that's what I'm talking about.
I have a list of things that I'm working on, and one of those things was getting a will put in place for my husband and I. I guess that with 6 children you would think we had already done that, but we hadn't. One of the things that held us back was the cost involved. Plus, it seemed complicated and that involves more time figuring out how to navigate that road.
Last year, we hunkered down and secured a more reasonable amount of life insurance on both my husband and I. It has taken an adjustment in our budget, but we have much more peace of mind about this. As we were getting this all in place, the subject came up again about getting a will done.
Again, we hit a wall when it came to finances. I had overheard someone sometime telling another someone that they had just gotten a will done and that it had cost them $2,000. There is no way we can even come close to affording that, but we knew it was something that we HAD to figure out a way to do. Let me encourage you....if you have children.....if you have one iota of interest in what happens to your children if you were no longer around to care for them....then you have to have a will in place. If not, your children become wards of the state and there is this whole legal process to go through for a family member to get custody of them. Why not just take a few minutes now to get that information down on paper, toss it into a safe deposit box, and be done with it. Then if something tragic does happen to you, your grieving family won't have to go through all that with your sweet babies!!
ANYWAY, so this was a burden on my heart and one thing I wanted to get done THIS year!!
So I was praying about it, when I got a letter in the mail one day here this past January from this organization:
Homeschool Legal Advantage
I am very familiar with them as most of the churches I have been involved with support their ministry. Plus, when I was in high school, David Gibbs Jr. was still participating in some debate competitions that my high school attended, as well as his father, David Gibbs Sr., being one of the featured speakers. They had just been at our church a few weeks earlier and I had had this conversation with the younger Gibbs. ANYWAY, so this letter says that because our church supports them, we were receiving a FREE membership to the "Homeschool Legal Advantage." It is a ministry that is comprised of Christian lawyers who will defend your right to homeschool and other things.
But here is the amazing news: one of the benefits of this membership is that they draft your "Last Will and Testament" for FREE!!!
FREE!!!
I couldn't believe it. They sent us a form to fill out for a basic will that names the caregiver for your children in the event you die before they are legal age. We sent that back, they emailed us a rough draft for corrections, they sent us a hard copy to have signed and executed. We signed it in front of a notary with two witnesses, and it was DONE!!! Easy......oh, and did I mention....FREE!!!!
If you go to their website, you can see all the benefits of the one-year membership and the cost! It's something like a "suggested donation" of $65 per year. But, my friend, that cost alone would be less than the cost of having a will drafted in another place!!! It would be so worth the one-year membership just to have your will drafted!!!! Please go check this out!! We did it and were thrilled with how available they were to answer any questions we had and the professionalism with which they treated us!!!
Go.....GO!!!
P.S. Once you get some of this stuff in order you may want to have a handy little thing like
this to keep track of it all!!!
