Investment advice needed

[Dawg52]

It's been a tough week. My brother, 56 years old, *lost his 3 year battle with cancer and was buried yesterday. He has a wife who is a nurse and has one daughter in college. Also has 2 sons but they are grown and earning a living.

Basically my sister in law is in good shape financially but all investments were handled by my brother. He asked me to help her with some planning. She will receive 500k from a life insurance policy and has approximately 1.5 mil in a brokerage account. *All of the 1.5 mil is currently in cash. They do not have any debt. College tuition will be her biggest expenditure over the next 3 years.

Would you advise her just to go to someone like Merrill Lynch or handled it herself? My thought is to get her started with a simple plan that she can monitor with my help from time to time. I like the idear of putting a good portion of the life insurance proceeds into an annuity to supplement her salary. She plans to work several years. I would then put half of her 1.5 mil in a balanced mutual fund (Vanguards Wellesley fund) for some growth. Then I would put 50-100k in a money market account for college expenses and emergencies, and the balance in a ladder of cd's maturing from 6 months to 5 years.

I hate the thought of paying high fees with someone like Merrill Lynch. I think a simple plan as above would work find as all she would have to do is just renew the cd's as they mature. What kind of advice would you give her?