What happens if the caregiver gets sick, ages or dies?
A backup plan can protect a child's stability if illness, hospitalization or age changes your ability to provide care.
Part of our Caregiver Wellbeing resource series. See the main Caregiver Wellbeing guide for the wider topic and related resources. Following a guided route? Return to the Legal-authority route.
Information reviewed September 2026. Program rules, benefits and services can change, so use the linked official source for current requirements.
Many grandparents quietly ask the same question: what happens to the child if something happens to me?
Kinship caregivers are often older than parents raising children in the same age group. A health problem, hospitalization, loss of mobility or death can therefore affect the child’s stability in a very direct way.
Planning for that possibility is not pessimistic. It is part of reducing the number of decisions that would have to be made during a crisis.
Start with two different plans.
Emergency backup care
Who could safely care for the child tonight, for a weekend or while you are in hospital?
- Who can pick the child up?
- Do they know medications and routines?
- Can they access the home?
- Does GACP or Child Protection need to approve alternate care?
Long-term planning
Who could realistically raise the child if you permanently could not?
- Would they be willing?
- Where do they live?
- What does the child think?
- What legal process would be required?
- Could siblings and important relationships stay connected?
If the child is in GACP, talk to the worker before there is a crisis.
PEI’s GACP service can close if the child no longer lives with the approved caregiver or if the caregiver no longer meets program criteria. That means a backup caregiver should not simply assume that an existing GACP agreement or payment will transfer to them.
Ask the GACP worker what would happen if illness, hospitalization or declining health affected your ability to provide care.
Put important information where someone can actually find it.
- Custody, guardianship or GACP documents.
- Health card information and medication list.
- School and child care contacts.
- Names of doctors, therapists and specialists.
- Parent and sibling contact information.
- Allergies and emergency instructions.
- Benefit and insurance information.
- Location of birth certificates, passports and other originals.
- A list of people the child trusts.
Download the Family Emergency and Support Plan
Review your will and estate plan.
If you are responsible for a child, tell the lawyer preparing or reviewing your will about that caregiving arrangement. Ask specifically what a will can and cannot do about a minor child, how money intended for the child should be handled and whether life insurance, trusts or other planning tools are appropriate.
Do not assume that naming someone in a will is the same as giving that person legal custody or guardianship.
Consider the child's financial stability too.
Ask what would happen to housing, insurance, RESP savings and other assets if you died. If you receive GACP or child benefits, remember that those payments follow program eligibility and the child’s care arrangement rather than simply becoming part of your estate.
Talk with the proposed backup caregiver.
Do not name or rely on someone who has never agreed to the responsibility. Talk about the child's routines, relationships, contact with parents, school, culture, disability or health needs and what long-term care could realistically require.
Talk with the child without making them carry the worry.
Children do not need every legal detail. A simple message can be enough: the adults have a plan for who would care for them if you were ever too sick to do it, and they would not be left to solve that problem themselves.
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