I'm Raising My Grandson — Who Takes Him If I Die?

If you are raising your grandson and you die before he is grown, the first question is not about money — it is about who steps in, and how quickly. The honest position is that there is no automatic answer written down anywhere. What happens to your grandchild if you die depends on who else holds parental responsibility for him, what legal arrangement you have in place, and, when neither of those provides someone suitable, on a decision made by children's services and ultimately a court.

That uncertainty is the thing worth planning around, because you are in a position the system quietly assumes will not arise. Kinship carers — grandparents, aunts, older siblings raising a child whose parents cannot — are on average much older than the parents the rules are built for, and are among the least likely of any carers to hold life cover. You have taken on the hardest job at the age when the safety net around you is thinnest.

This page sets out who would be approached for your grandson, how long that decision realistically takes, what changes for him financially, and what a person in their sixties can actually put in place — including cover — to make the handover survivable rather than a crisis.

The short answer: it depends who else holds parental responsibility

Parental responsibility is the legal authority to make decisions for a child, and it is the hinge everything turns on. A birth mother always has it. A father usually has it if he was married to the mother or is named on the birth certificate. Those people keep their parental responsibility even when they are not the ones raising the child day to day — which is the situation many kinship carers are in.

So if you die and a parent with parental responsibility is alive, willing and assessed as suitable, that parent can care for your grandson from that point, whatever the reason he came to live with you in the first place. Where that is not safe or possible — and in kinship care it very often is not, which is why the child is with you — the local authority's children's services step in, assess the wider family, and if necessary ask a court to decide. The court's single test is the child's welfare, not who is next in the family line.

Who would be approached, and how long it takes

If there is no parent able to take over, social workers look first to people the child already knows: other grandparents, aunts and uncles, adult siblings, close family friends. A relative who puts themselves forward is assessed — their home, their circumstances, their ability to meet the child's needs — before anything is confirmed. In the meantime the child needs somewhere to be, so an emergency arrangement, sometimes with foster carers, can bridge the gap while the assessment runs.

None of this is fast. A viability assessment and then a fuller one, court applications, and the checks that go with them are measured in weeks and months, not days. For a child who has just lost the grandparent who was his whole world, that period of not knowing where he will end up is its own harm. The practical value of planning ahead is that it shortens this — a named, willing, forewarned relative who already expects the role is assessed far more quickly than the family the social worker meets for the first time at the worst moment. The wider question of choosing that person, and whether they could carry it, is covered in naming a guardian who can't afford to say yes.

Your legal arrangement changes what you can do

Kinship care comes in several legal shapes, and they are not equal when it comes to what you can put in place for after your death.

If the arrangement is informal — your grandson simply lives with you, with no court order — you do not hold parental responsibility, and you cannot appoint a guardian in your will who would override a surviving parent. If you have a child arrangements order naming you as the person he lives with, you gain parental responsibility for as long as it lasts. If you are his special guardian, you have the strongest position: a special guardianship order gives you enhanced parental responsibility, lets you make most day-to-day decisions without the parents, and — importantly here — allows you to appoint a guardian to take over on your death, an appointment that can take effect even where a parent with parental responsibility is still alive. The court always retains the final say over what is best for the child, but a special guardian's stated wishes carry real weight.

If you do not know which of these you have, that is the first thing to establish, because it determines whether the guardian you have in mind can actually be handed the role or merely suggested. The pattern of one relative quietly absorbing a caring role, and what lands on them, runs through the sibling who inherits the caring role.

The risk nobody prices in: age

Here is the uncomfortable part, and the reason this page exists at all. A parent raising a young child is usually in their thirties or forties. A grandparent raising one is frequently in their sixties. Across the ten, fifteen or more years until the child turns eighteen, the chance that the carer does not see it through is not a remote, once-in-a-lifetime possibility — it is materially higher for someone in their sixties than for a younger parent, and it rises with every year of the child's dependence.

The Office for National Statistics publishes the standard UK reference for the probability of a person of a given age dying before a later one, and the shape it shows is unambiguous: mortality climbs steeply through the sixties and seventies, which are exactly the years a grandparent carer is trying to get a young child to adulthood.

Source: Office for National Statistics, National life tables, UK: 1980–1982 to 2022–2024, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

This is not said to frighten you. It is said because the mismatch — highest responsibility, highest risk, lowest coverage — is the single most fixable weakness in a kinship carer's situation, and fixing it does not depend on your health being perfect or your income being high.

Can you get life cover at 63?

Age alone does not rule you out, and it is worth being precise about the two routes, because they suit different people.

Over-50s plans accept applications within a set age band — often up to around 80 — with no medical and no health questions. In exchange for that certainty, they normally limit the first year or two to accidental death only, or to a return of the premiums paid, before full cover begins. The sum assured is a fixed cash lump sum, and because premiums typically continue for many years, it is possible over a long life to pay in more than the policy eventually pays out. That is the trade-off for guaranteed acceptance, and it is worth understanding rather than being surprised by.

Underwritten cover asks health questions and takes your circumstances into account. For someone in reasonable health it can offer considerably more cover for each pound paid, and the sum can be sized to a real target rather than a round number. What any of this would cost, and whether an insurer will offer it, depends entirely on your age, health and the answers you give — it is settled by underwriting, not promised in advance. An FCA-authorised broker can look at both routes for you; you can get life insurance quotes and see what is realistically open to you before deciding anything. We do not quote premiums on this site because they are personal to you.

What the money actually changes for him

It is easy to assume this is about leaving an inheritance. It is not. For a child in kinship care, a sum that arrives quickly changes something more immediate: whether a willing relative can afford to say yes.

Taking on a child means space for him — often a bigger home or an extra room — changed working hours, years of ordinary costs, and the disruption of an established household. Kinship allowances from the local authority exist, but they are discretionary, they vary between councils, and they are rarely enough on their own. A relative who loves your grandson can still be forced to hesitate because the numbers do not work. A guaranteed sum that lands without waiting for probate takes that reason away: it funds the move, the room, the dropped hours, the gap while everything is sorted. If that relative rents from a housing association, whether the child's home can carry over at all is a separate question, set out in succeeding to a housing association tenancy.

What to put in place now

A short, deliberate list does most of the work, and none of it is expensive:

• Establish your legal status. Informal carer, child arrangements order or special guardian — find out which you are, because it sets what you can decide for his future.
• Name the person you want to take over, and ask them now. A forewarned, willing relative is assessed far faster than a stranger to the process. Where you are a special guardian, appoint them properly in your will.
• Make or update your will, and write a letter alongside it describing how your grandson lives — his routines, his school, his health, who matters to him. It is not legally binding, but it guides whoever steps in.
• Check who inherits your pension. A pension pot usually passes by a nomination form, not your will, and an out-of-date one can send money to the wrong person. If yours is a workplace scheme, the trap is real — see the NEST pot and who actually gets it.
• Arrange cover you can rely on, sized to what the receiving household would need, so your grandson's future is not left to a discretionary allowance.

You can work through the rest of these decisions in our guide to dependants and unusual family shapes, which gathers the situations the default rules serve worst — and kinship care is near the top of that list.

Frequently asked questions

Who decides where my grandson lives if I die while raising him?

Anyone with parental responsibility, usually a parent, can care for him unless a court says otherwise. If nobody suitable holds it, children's services become involved and a court decides, applying the test of his welfare. Naming a guardian in your will carries real weight, and if you are his special guardian your appointment can take effect on your death, but the court keeps the final say over what is best for him.

Can I still get life cover at 63 if I am raising a grandchild?

Age alone does not rule you out. Over-50s plans accept applications within a set age range with no medical questions, but they normally limit the first year or two to accidental death or a return of premiums before full cover begins. Underwritten cover asks health questions and can offer more for each pound paid, and whether it is available and on what terms is settled by underwriting.

Does money really change who takes a child on?

It often decides whether a relative can say yes. Taking on a child means a bigger home, changed working hours and years of costs, and kinship allowances are discretionary and vary between councils. A sum that arrives quickly, without waiting for probate, removes the practical reason a willing family member hesitates.