Prudence, I disagree on your advice to the couple looking for an option if they both were to die while their child is still a minor. It won't be long before the child has a milieu of his own; and transferring to the friends, several hundred miles away, will not only deprive the child and the grandparents of their relationships, but also drop the child into a sea of strangeness at a very vulnerable time. After all, how well can he be expected to know the friends, living so far away?

The letter wasn't really clear, but it said the friends live far from the other relatives. It didn't necessarily mean that the friends didn't live close to the LW. I kind of thought that "close" friends also means that they live nearby.