One of the most difficult tasks connected with your estate plan is too easily overlooked. Choosing your fiduciary should be more than just naming your oldest child, or all of your children. Being a fiduciary is actually hard work. You should pay attention to which potential fiduciary is actually up to the task. In last week's podcast episode, we addressed the question: what is a fiduciary? But now that you know the answer to that question, your next problem is choosing your fiduciary. Here's an important principle to keep in mind as you make your choice: you are not disfavoring a child by not naming them as your fiduciary. It is a challenging role, and no one should feel badly that they didn't get chosen. As you make the decision, you might think to look for more information about fiduciaries and the fiduciary duty. Note that there is a lot of discussion in the media in recent years about the concept of a fiduciary duty as applied to financial advisors. That's an important concept, and we applaud anyone looking up the question in selecting their own financial advisor. But that fiduciary duty is different from the one at issue when you choose your personal representative (executor), agent on your power of attorney or other person to handle your personal affairs for you.