11/14/2002 - I've never joined the multitudes who, over the last few years, made their personal websites associates of online merchants such as Amazon. I was just too lazy, but I do read many books, and I finally read one that cut me open enough to feature it and recommend it be read, the sooner the better.
It is "Blackbird, A Childhood Lost & Found", by Jennifer Lauck, 1999 (see link below).
I'm not going to repeat what you can get just as easily by simply going to her website right now, or by grabbing the book, and perhaps its sequel "Still Waters", which I've not yet read, from the nearest bookstore.
I'm sure the author wrote it mostly as a personal catharsis, but it is an emotionally gripping memoir of her interrupted childhood that ought to send shivers down the spine of any parent who loves their children dearly.
Before I defer to the link, let me simply say to all of you who are parents - MAKE SURE YOU HAVE PROVIDED FOR YOUR MINOR CHILDREN.
Simply holding insurance policies or other financial instruments is not enough. You must make sure every single "i" is dotted and every "t" crossed in regards to whom you wish to be guardians to your minor children in the event you perish unexpectedly. You must also make sure that the money left to them is protected against those who would fight to take custody of your children just to control their inheritance, trust funds or other such payments, whether from private sources or government supplements that might be due them until they reach adulthood.
Put off anything if its your nature, even the finances, but NOT THE GUARDIANSHIP! There are evil people out there, some of whom might be your own relatives, neighbors, friends. And if not evil, some of them might simply be too messed up, ineffectual, dysfunctional, or have such folks in their household, any or all of whom could turn your orphaned child's life into a Cinderella horror story with no fairy Godmother.
Of all the arrangements you make for your children in life, nothing can take priority over making sure they get placed in the right hands, should one night, while they sleep under the watch of the teenage babysitter from across the street, you and your spouse are killed driving home, or die in a restaurant fire, or theater collapse, or are murdered in a mugging, and your children are awakened, probably by distraught neighbors or the police, or a county social worker, with the news that they are now orphans, and that the next time they go to sleep, it will be in a juvenile shelter, or the home of their closest legal next of kin, who you might revile as an abusive lowlife, never realizing that literally overnight, without warning, your local laws or courts could turn to them as the logical foster parent of choice.
Even worse, should you be a widow or widower, whose current spouse serves as your children's stepparent. Do your children get along with him or her, or their own children, the step siblings to your kids?
If they don't, and you haven't made better plans, should you suddenly drop dead, your children are instant Cinderellas, completely at the mercy of that stepfamily.
Get going, get the book, read what happened to Ms. Lauck, and make sure it can't ever happen to your children.

UPDATE January 2003 - I've read the second book, "Still Waters". What can I say; it is NOT a happy ending to the first. Read them both and then do what you have to, because nobody else will for you.