What Legal Documents Do You Need When You Turn 18?
When you’re the parent of a college-age student, there are many things on your radar: Rooming assignments, school tuition, and that dreaded trip to Target to outfit your new student who is about to venture off to college or to otherwise begin the next stage of their life.
As the parent of a young adult, you have spent your child’s entire life making (or helping them make) medical, legal, and financial decisions on their behalf. And because they may still primarily live under your roof, the easy assumption is that you are still in charge of them, and that this trend will continue.
This is where many parents run into trouble. The moment your child turns 18, legally speaking, they are an adult. Without legal documentation, parents of adult children are unable to tend to any medical, legal, or financial matter on behalf of their child after the child turns 18.
This is true even for a sick or injured child. You will not be able to call the doctor’s office on your child’s behalf, negotiate with an insurance company on their behalf, or help them navigate the school administration. That is, not without the proper legal documentation.
One of our colleagues ran into this very issue when her daughter was in college out of state and injured herself playing sports. She was partially covered by college insurance and partially still on her parents’ insurance (as many young adults are).
Her parents’ insurance required that the MRI be done in Massachusetts, so negotiation was required between the two insurance companies. Since the proper legal documents were not in place, neither insurance company was willing to speak with the parents (because the student was over 18) and thus it became a nightmare for the student’s parents to navigate. It would have been a much smoother and far less stressful process for all involved had a package of “Young Adult Documents” already been in place.
The law does allow competent persons 18 years of age and older to appoint parents and/or others to make legal, financial, and medical determinations on their behalf when they are unable to do so for themselves.
It is for this reason that we at Borchers Trust Law strongly urge parents of young adults to make arrangements for their children. A “Young Adult Documents” package includes the following legal documents:
- Durable Power of Attorney – This allows your child to name one or both parents (acting both together only, acting either alone, or one as the primary and the second as the backup) to attend to financial and legal matters on their behalf. For more information, please see: You Have Power of Attorney. Now What?
- Health Care Proxy – Your child will name one person as the primary and another (or more than one) as backup(s). This document will allow you to tend to your child’s health matters. For more information, please see: You Need a Health Care Proxy. Now What?
- HIPAA Release – This document is needed to access your child’s private health information.
- FERPA Waiver – This document is needed to access protected student records (both educational and health-related) under the Family Educational Rights Act, and is only necessary if your young adult child is in school.
This complete set of documents will enable parents to attend to the financial, legal, and health care needs of their adult children, and to talk with health care providers, college health centers, financial aid, bursars, and transcripts offices.
While it may seem like a long shot that you would need any of these documents, we firmly believe it is better to be prepared, as it can be frustrating and inconvenient to need them and not have them.
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