Everyone assumed Rose would take them. Nobody had written it down.

When Hansel and Gretel's father died, there was no Will, and so there was no named guardian - no record of who he would have trusted with his children's lives.

Their aunt Rose would have come at once. She was never called, because no document had ever made her role official, and by the time she heard, a stranger had already presented herself as a family friend.

What actually happens in real life

If you have children under 18, naming guardians is the single most important thing your Will does. Money can be sorted out later. This cannot.

Without a named guardian, no relative has an automatic right to step in - not a grandparent, not an aunt, not the person everyone in the family has always assumed would take them. Nobody is obliged to contact them. Children can spend time in temporary care while the family courts work out what should happen, and the person eventually given parental responsibility may hold views on raising children quite different from yours.

None of that means the people making those decisions are acting badly. Social workers and courts do a difficult job with no instructions from the two people who had the strongest views. The problem is the silence, not the substitute. It is also the silence that leaves a gap for anyone who wants to present themselves as closer to a family than they really are, with nobody named to contradict them.

There is a second half that most parents miss. Naming a guardian asks somebody to take on years of cost, and state support for those raising a bereaved child is minimal. Meanwhile, with no Will, the money itself sits tangled in the estate for months while intestacy runs its course - so a guardian who is willing may still be a guardian who cannot afford to say yes.

And a legal appointment only tells the guardian what they may do, not what you would have wanted. The schools you chose. The values you hoped to pass on. The routines that make a frightened child feel safe. The people you trusted, and the people you did not. None of that is in a Will unless you write it down separately.

Five questions to ask yourself

1. If both parents died this year, who would raise your children - and where is that written down?
2. Have you asked them, and would they still say yes today? Have you named a substitute?
3. Could they afford it, and how quickly would money actually reach them?
4. Beyond the legal appointment, have you recorded what you would want - schools, values, routines, the people you trust and the people you do not?
5. What happens if you are incapacitated rather than dead? Your Will does not cover that.

What good looks like

Guardians appointed in a valid Will - a legal appointment, unambiguous and immediate, so the person you chose does not have to prove themselves to a court or a social worker.

A letter of wishes alongside it, holding everything the Will cannot: the practical, personal detail that lets someone step into your children's lives as a chosen figure rather than a stranger.

Money held in trust for the children, with your chosen guardian as a trustee alongside an independent professional, so funds are available for a home, schooling and care - managed with oversight, and not tangled in intestacy at the moment they are needed most.

All of it takes one evening. None of it can be arranged afterwards.

If any of those five questions gave you pause, that is the signal.

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