A will does two kinds of work. The part everyone knows about distributes your property. The part that matters most to parents of young children does something no other document can: it tells the court who you chose to raise your children if you are not there to do it. For a parent of a child under eighteen – or of a dependent adult child with a disability – the guardian nomination may be the single most important sentence in the entire estate plan.
It is a hard thing to think about, which is exactly why it deserves to be decided once, deliberately, in a signed document, rather than left to a courtroom full of grieving relatives with competing ideas. Below is how guardian nominations actually work under Kentucky law, including several rules that surprise most parents and one drafting technique that can save your chosen guardian real money and trouble. If you have children under eighteen and no will – or a will signed before they were born – call the estate planning attorneys at Bunch & Brock in Lexington at 859-254-5522 or contact us online.
What Happens If You Never Name a Guardian
If both parents die without naming anyone, the District Court must still appoint a guardian. It just does so without knowing your wishes, your family dynamics, or your reasons. Relatives may step forward, sometimes several at once, and the court chooses among them under a best-interest standard with no guidance from you. Disputes between grandparents, or between the two sides of a family, are common, painful, and expensive – and the children live through every month of it.
Contrary to a fear you will see repeated online, a child with willing relatives does not simply “end up in foster care.” Kentucky’s actual default is different and, in its own way, sobering: under KRS 395.390, when a minor has no testamentary guardian and no one will apply for appointment or serve, the District Court assigns the county’s public administrator and guardian – a competent public official, and a complete stranger to your child. Every outcome in this section is avoidable with one properly executed nomination.
How the Nomination Works: KRS 387.040
Kentucky law expressly authorizes the last surviving parent of a minor to nominate, by will, a guardian – or a limited guardian, or a conservator, or both – for the child (KRS 387.040). The statute also allows you to name different people for the two jobs: one to raise the child, another to manage the child’s money. That flexibility matters, and we come back to it below.
Note the phrase “last surviving parent.” A nomination in one parent’s will does not displace the other parent, who ordinarily continues raising the children. The nomination becomes operative when the second parent dies, or when a sole parent dies. In practice this means both parents’ wills should contain matching nominations, prepared together, so that whichever parent survives, the same plan is in place. A nomination in only one spouse’s will is a half-finished plan – one of several reasons both spouses need wills, which we cover in our article on whether you need a will if you are married in Kentucky.
The nomination is powerful but not self-executing. The District Court makes the actual appointment. Under KRS 387.032, the court appoints the person or entity whose appointment “would be in the best interest of the minor, taking into consideration the ability of the person or entity to manage and preserve the minor’s estate, and taking into consideration the person or entity nominated pursuant to KRS 387.040 or 387.050.” In the ordinary case, courts honor the parent’s choice – judges rightly presume that no one knew the child, or the candidates, better than the parent did. But the court retains authority to appoint someone else where circumstances require it, which is one more reason the nomination should be current, thoughtfully made, and, where helpful, briefly explained.
Venue follows the will. Under KRS 387.020, when the last surviving parent’s will nominates a guardian, the proceeding takes place in the county where that will was probated; otherwise, it takes place where the child lives.
A Drafting Point Worth Real Money: Waiving the Guardian’s Surety
Here is a provision most parents have never heard of and most form wills omit. Under KRS 387.070, a guardian generally cannot act until appointed and bonded with good surety. But KRS 387.070(3)(a) creates an exception: if the guardian is appointed under KRS 387.040 and the parent’s will requests that no surety be required, none is required – unless the court finds, because of changed circumstances or other good cause, that proceeding without surety would be imprudent. (Surety is also excused under KRS 387.070(3)(b) where the assets are placed in a restricted account under KRS 387.122.)
Translated: one sentence in your will can spare the person you chose the cost and the credit underwriting of a corporate surety bond at the worst moment of their life. It is free to include and it is routinely left out of do-it-yourself wills.
The Age-14 Rule Most Parents Have Never Heard Of
Kentucky gives older children a formal voice. Under KRS 387.050, a minor who is fourteen or older may nominate his or her own guardian, limited guardian, or conservator – either in person before a District Judge, or by a signed writing made after a private examination in the judge’s presence. That nomination takes precedence over an appointment made by will or otherwise before the child turned fourteen.
The court still decides under the best-interest standard of KRS 387.032, which expressly directs it to consider nominations made under either KRS 387.040 or KRS 387.050. But a teenager’s stated choice carries real weight.
For most families this is a feature rather than a threat: by fourteen, a child’s bond with the intended guardian usually confirms the parents’ choice. But if you have reason to think a teenager might nominate someone you consider unsuitable – a permissive relative, a parent’s ex-partner, an adult who has been a poor influence – your will should do more than name your preferred guardian. It should briefly say why, putting your reasoning in front of the judge at the moment it matters. A calm paragraph written years in advance can outweigh a fourteen-year-old’s momentary enthusiasm for the fun uncle.
What a Kentucky Guardian Actually Does
Once appointed, a guardian has “the powers and responsibilities of a parent regarding the ward’s support, care, and education” (KRS 387.065(1)) – and, reassuringly for the person you are asking to serve, is not personally liable for the ward’s expenses and is not liable to third parties merely because of the relationship. Specifically, the guardian takes custody of the child, establishes the child’s home within Kentucky, cares for the child’s personal effects, may consent to medical treatment, and may receive benefits payable for the child’s support.
On the financial side, the guardian’s powers are broader than most people assume in some respects and narrower in others. Under KRS 387.065(4), a guardian may spend income or principal for the child’s support, care, and education without District Court authorization, unless the court restricts that power. Under KRS 387.125, the guardian must take possession of the child’s property, invest what is not needed currently (in investments authorized by KRS 386.020), and may sell the child’s personal property without court approval. But to sell the child’s real property, the guardian must go through the court under KRS Chapter 389A; to settle a claim or lawsuit on the child’s behalf, the guardian needs court approval; and to lease mineral, oil, or gas rights or sell timber, the guardian needs court approval with a guardian ad litem appointed to report on the transaction. The guardian must also file an inventory (KRS 387.100) and periodic accountings (KRS 387.175).
Guardians are entitled to reasonable compensation and reimbursement from the child’s funds. Under KRS 387.111, that compensation may not exceed the limits in KRS 387.760: a commission of up to 6% of income collected, plus either an annual commission of 0.3% of the fair market value of the property in the fiduciary’s care or up to 6% of the principal distributed – not both – with additional compensation available for unusual or extraordinary services.
And then the provision that ends the whole structure: under KRS 387.065(8), when the child turns eighteen, the guardian must pay over and distribute everything remaining to the now-adult child as soon as possible. Which brings us to the most important structural decision in this entire article.
Separate the Person from the Money
This is the insight most families miss, and it is where a will earns its fee.
In Kentucky, the guardian cares for the child’s person. The child’s property is managed by a guardian or conservator under court supervision – inventory, accountings, restricted accounts, court approval for real estate and settlements – and then handed over outright at eighteen. Eighteen. Not twenty-five, not after college, not in installments. A Kentucky custodial account is no better: under the Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, KRS 385.202 requires the custodian to transfer the custodial property to the minor at age eighteen for the transfers that section covers. Kentucky’s version has no age-21 alternative, so the “just open a UTMA account” advice you will read on national websites produces an earlier payout here than parents expect.
The alternative is a trust created in your will (a testamentary trust) or a revocable living trust. Your chosen trustee manages the inheritance under your written instructions – for education, health, support, a first home, a business – on the timeline you set, free of routine court supervision, with no automatic payout at eighteen. You decide whether distributions happen at 25 and 30, or stay in trust for life with a professional co-trustee, or anything in between.
The guardian and the trustee can be the same person for simplicity, or different people as a deliberate check: the aunt who is right for raising your children may not be the person you want managing a life insurance payout, and saying so in your documents is not an insult – it is planning. Either way, the choice is yours rather than the court’s. Our companion guide on what happens when a minor is a beneficiary walks through the money side in detail, and it pairs with this article for a complete plan.
One coordination point that undoes many otherwise-good plans: never name a minor child directly as the beneficiary of life insurance, a retirement account, or a payable-on-death account. Those designations override your will, and naming a child directly forces exactly the court-supervised conservatorship and age-eighteen payout the trust was meant to avoid. Name the trust instead.
Choosing the Guardian: The Decision Behind the Document
The legal requirements are minimal – an adult of sound mind, willing and able to serve. The real criteria are yours: parenting values, stability, health and stage of life, geography and schools, religious and educational views, the guardian’s own family situation and finances, the relationship your children already have with them, and the honest question of whether this person can absorb your children into their life. A few hard-won points:
Ask first, and ask seriously
Sit down with your intended guardian, make sure they understand the full weight of what you are asking, and confirm they genuinely accept. A nomination that surprises its nominee at the worst moment of a family’s life serves no one. Kentucky does not require the nominee’s consent in advance, which is precisely why you should get it.
Name a backup, and then a second backup
Circumstances change over the years a will sits in a drawer – health, marriages, moves, estrangements. An alternate nomination keeps the decision yours even if your first choice cannot serve.
Think about keeping siblings together, and say so
If you intend that your children not be separated, put that in the document.
Consider geography honestly
A guardian across the country means a new school, new friends, and distance from grandparents. Sometimes that is the right answer; it should be a decision, not an accident.
Be careful naming a couple
“My sister and her husband” raises a question you should answer in the document: what happens if they divorce, or if one of them dies? Name the individual you actually mean.
Write down guidance, not just a name
Your will, or an accompanying letter, can convey how you hope your children will be raised – education, faith, relationships with the other side of the family, activities that matter to them. It is not binding on the guardian, but a parent’s written guidance is a genuine gift to the person doing the raising.
Revisit the choice every few years, and after any birth, death, divorce, move, or falling-out. The guardian you named when your first child was an infant may not be the person you would choose now.
Blended Families and the Other Parent
One point that catches parents off guard: a guardian nomination in your will does not override the rights of your child’s other legal parent. If you and your child’s other parent are divorced and you die, the surviving parent ordinarily takes custody – your nomination operates only when there is no surviving parent. A nomination is not a mechanism for cutting out an ex-spouse, and drafting it as though it were creates false comfort.
Where a parent has genuine concerns about the other parent’s fitness, the answer is not a will provision but a custody proceeding in the appropriate court, and separately, careful use of a trust so that the money you leave is managed by a trustee you choose rather than by the other parent as the child’s natural guardian. Stepparents present the mirror-image problem: a stepparent who has raised a child for years has no automatic standing, so if you intend your spouse to raise your child from a prior relationship, the nomination and the surrounding planning need to be explicit. We discuss the broader issues in estate planning for blended families.
Planning Around Serious Illness – What Kentucky Actually Offers
Some states have enacted “standby guardianship” statutes that let a parent facing a serious diagnosis designate, in advance and in writing, someone who can step in upon a defined triggering event without a full court proceeding. Kentucky has not adopted such a statute for minor children. The standby and successor provisions in KRS 387.730 and 387.750 belong to the Guardianship and Conservatorship for Disabled Persons subchapter and govern guardians of disabled adults, not a parent’s advance designation for a minor. If you have read elsewhere that Kentucky offers standby guardianship for children, that advice is describing another state’s law.
What Kentucky does offer a parent planning through illness:
- A current will with a guardian nomination and a trust, so that the plan is in place the moment it is needed.
- A durable power of attorney under KRS Chapter 457 and a health care surrogate designation under KRS 311.621–311.643, so someone can manage your affairs and your medical decisions during an illness rather than only after death. See our estate planning checklist.
- A contingent petition under KRS 387.330, in which a competent adult may file, in advance, a verified petition asking the court to appoint a guardian or conservator for the petitioner upon a specified condition relating to the petitioner’s health. This addresses the parent’s own affairs, not the children’s guardianship, but it is a genuine Kentucky planning tool that most people have never heard of.
- Practical custody arrangements during the illness, worked out with counsel, and where appropriate a family court proceeding – because a will does nothing while you are living.
If you are a parent managing a difficult diagnosis, this is a conversation to have now rather than later, and it is one we have with clients regularly.
If Your Dependent Child Is a Disabled Adult
For a child eighteen or older with a disability, the analysis shifts entirely. Guardianship of an adult runs through Kentucky’s disability statutes (KRS 387.500 et seq.), which require a court determination of disability rather than a simple appointment, and which offer limited guardianship and limited conservatorship as less restrictive alternatives. Two provisions matter for parents: under KRS 387.730, a parent who is serving as the appointed guardian or conservator of a disabled person may nominate a successor by will, and the court considers that nomination when the will is probated; and where both parents serve as coguardians, the survivor automatically continues without further court action. Under KRS 387.750, the court may designate a standby appointee to take over on the guardian’s death, resignation, removal, or incapacity – the closest thing Kentucky has to standby guardianship, and it exists only in this adult context.
The financial planning shifts too: a special needs trust (supplemental needs trust) lets an inheritance supplement rather than destroy SSI and Medicaid eligibility. Parents of children with disabilities should raise both pieces – the guardianship succession and the trust – in the same planning conversation, and should also consider whether a supported decision-making arrangement or a power of attorney would serve better than a full guardianship.
Getting the Document Right
The nomination is only as good as the will that carries it. Under KRS 394.020, you must be eighteen and of sound mind to make a will. Under KRS 394.040, a will that is not entirely in your own handwriting must be signed by you and subscribed by at least two credible witnesses in your presence and in the presence of each other; a self-proving affidavit under KRS 394.225 spares your family from having to locate those witnesses years later.
One development worth knowing from Kentucky’s 2026 legislation: under the Uniform Electronic Estate Planning Documents Act (KRS 394.720–394.750, effective July 15, 2026), a nomination of a guardian for a minor child or a disabled adult child is expressly among the documents that may be executed electronically, and electronic wills are separately authorized under KRS 394.700–394.715. The convenience changes nothing about the care required. A defective document protects no one, and a guardian nomination is not a provision you want litigated.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I appoint a guardian for my child in my Kentucky will?
Yes. KRS 387.040 authorizes the last surviving parent of a minor to nominate a guardian, limited guardian, or conservator by will, and to name different people for the child’s care and the child’s money. The District Court makes the formal appointment, considering your nomination under KRS 387.032.
Is the court required to follow my choice of guardian?
Not strictly. The standard is the best interest of the minor (KRS 387.032), and the court weighs the nominee’s ability to manage and preserve the child’s estate along with your nomination. In the ordinary case, a parent’s nomination is followed.
Do both parents need to name a guardian?
Yes. KRS 387.040 speaks to the last surviving parent, so a nomination in only one spouse’s will leaves a gap if that spouse dies second. Matching nominations in both wills, prepared together, is the correct approach.
What if my child is a teenager?
A minor fourteen or older may nominate his or her own guardian before a District Judge under KRS 387.050, and that nomination takes precedence over an appointment made before the child turned fourteen. Name your choice in your will anyway, and briefly explain your reasoning – the court weighs both.
Does my will override my child’s other parent?
No. If your child’s other legal parent survives you, that parent ordinarily continues to have custody. A guardian nomination operates when there is no surviving parent.
Will my chosen guardian have to post a bond?
Not if your will says otherwise. Under KRS 387.070(3)(a), when a guardian is appointed under KRS 387.040 and the will requests that no surety be required, none is required unless the court finds it imprudent given changed circumstances or other good cause.
Should the guardian also manage my child’s inheritance?
That is your call, and KRS 387.040 lets you split the roles. Pairing the guardian nomination with a trust lets you choose a trustee – the same person or a different one – and avoids court-supervised management, restricted accounts, and the automatic payout at eighteen.
At what age does my child receive the money?
Without a trust, at eighteen. A guardian must pay over everything remaining when the child turns eighteen (KRS 387.065(8)), and a Kentucky UTMA custodial account must be transferred to the child at eighteen as well (KRS 385.202). Only a trust lets you choose a later age or a staged distribution.
Does Kentucky have standby guardianship for minor children?
No. Kentucky has not enacted a standby guardianship statute for minors. The standby provisions in KRS 387.730 and 387.750 apply to guardians of disabled adults. For a parent facing serious illness, the tools are a current will, a durable power of attorney, a health care surrogate designation, and, where appropriate, a custody proceeding.
What happens if I never name anyone?
The District Court appoints a guardian without your input, choosing among whoever comes forward. If no one applies or will serve, KRS 395.390 directs the court to assign the county’s public administrator and guardian.
Can guardianship documents be signed electronically in Kentucky?
Since July 15, 2026, yes. A nomination of a guardian for a minor child or disabled adult child is among the documents covered by the Uniform Electronic Estate Planning Documents Act (KRS 394.720–394.750), and electronic wills are authorized under KRS 394.700–394.715, each subject to its own execution requirements.
Name the Person. Build the Plan.
No document can replace you. But one document can make sure the person who steps in is the person you chose, serving without an unnecessary bond, guided by your written wishes, with your children’s inheritance protected on your terms rather than handed over on a birthday.
The estate planning attorneys at Bunch & Brock have helped Central Kentucky parents make these decisions for decades: the guardian nomination and its alternates, the surety waiver, the trust that manages the money and sets the age, the beneficiary designations that point to the trust instead of to a child, and the properly executed wills – one for each parent – that carry it all. We understand that every family is different, and we take the time to plan like it.
To schedule an initial consultation, call Bunch & Brock today at 859-254-5522 or contact us online.
This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with Bunch & Brock, PSC. References reflect Kentucky law as of September 2026, including 2026 Ky. Acts ch. 134 (Senate Bill 50), effective July 15, 2026. For advice about your specific circumstances, please consult a licensed Kentucky attorney.
