As we head into summer, many parents will see their children graduate high school and prepare to leave home to attend college or pursue other life goals. This can be an exciting and emotional time, and with so much going on, estate planning probably isn’t at the front of your (or their) mind right now.
However, estate planning should actually be a top priority for both you and your kids. Here’s why: Once your kids turn 18, they become legal adults, and many areas of their life that were once under your control will become entirely their responsibility, whether you take action or not. To this end, if your kids don’t have the proper legal documents in place, you could face a costly and traumatic ordeal should something happen to them.
If your child were to get into a serious car accident and require hospitalization, for example, you would no longer have the automatic authority to make decisions about his or her medical treatment or the ability to manage their financial affairs. Without legal documentation, you wouldn’t even be able to access your child’s medical records or bank accounts without a court order.
To deal with this vulnerability and ensure your family never gets stuck in an expensive and unnecessary court process, before your kids leave home, have a conversation about estate planning and make sure they sign the following two documents.
Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care: Three-in-One Protection
For Georgia residents, and should your child continue to reside in the state, the first document your child needs is an Advance Directive for Health Care (ADHC). This document is the key piece for incapacity planning, medical information access, and treatment wishes. Whereas other states’ laws may require someone to separately sign a medical power of attorney, living will, and HIPPA waiver, in Georgia these three documents are combined into one.
Medical Power of Attorney
By appointing a healthcare agent, the ADHC functions as a medical power of attorney that allows your child to grant you (or someone else) the immediate legal authority to make healthcare decisions on their behalf if they become incapacitated and are unable to make these decisions themselves.
For example, the ADHC would allow you to make decisions about your child’s medical treatment if he or she is incapacitated in a car accident or falls into a coma due to a debilitating illness like COVID-19.
Without an ADHC in place, if your child suffers a severe accident or illness that requires hospitalization and you need to access their medical records to make decisions about their treatment, you’d have to petition the court to become their legal guardian. While a parent is typically the court’s first choice for a guardian, the guardianship process can be slow and expensive—and in medical emergencies, time is of the essence.
Living Will
While a medical power of attorney allows you to make healthcare decisions on your child’s behalf during their incapacity, a living will is an advance directive that provides specific guidance about these decisions, particularly at the end of life. The Georgia legislature included a living will section “End of Life Treatment Preferences” within the Advance Medical Directive in order to cover this topic.
For example, a living will allows your child to advise if and when they want life support removed should they ever require it. In addition to documenting how your child wants their medical care managed, a living will can also include instructions about who should visit them in the hospital and even what kind of food they would want provided. For example, if your child is a vegan, vegetarian, or takes specific supplements, these things should be considered and documented in their living will.
Additionally, given the pandemic, speak with your child about the unique medical decisions related to COVID-19, particularly intubation, ventilators, and experimental medications. At the same time, your child’s living will should also outline their quality of life decisions to ensure their emergency medical treatment doesn’t end up doing more harm than good.
HIPPA Waiver
Not to mention, due to HIPAA laws, once your child becomes 18, no one—not even their parents—can legally access his or her medical records without prior written permission. However, a properly completed ADHC will include a signed HIPAA authorization, so you can immediately access your child’s medical records to make informed decisions about his or her treatment.
Although you’ll find a variety of medical power of attorney, living will, and other advance directive documents online, your child has unique needs and wishes that can’t be anticipated by these fill-in-the-blank documents. Given this, we recommend you and your child work with us, your Personal Family Lawyer® to create—or at the very least, review—their advance directives.
Durable Financial Power of Attorney
Should your child become incapacitated, you may also need the ability to access and manage their finances and legal affairs, and this requires your child to grant you durable financial power of attorney.
Durable financial power of attorney gives you the authority to manage their financial and legal matters, such as paying their tuition, applying for student loans, paying their rent, negotiating (or re-negotiating) a lease, managing their bank accounts, and collecting government benefits if necessary. Without this document, you’ll have to petition the court for this authority.
Start Adulthood On The Right Track Before your kids leave the nest, discuss the value of estate planning and make sure they have the proper legal documents in place. By doing so, you are helping your family avoid a costly and emotional court process, while also demonstrating the importance of good financial and legal stewardship, which sets your kids on the right track from the very start.
As your Personal Family Lawyer®, we will not only help you draft these documents, we can also facilitate a family meeting to discuss the importance of estate planning with your kids. From there, we hope this will begin a life-long relationship with your children, as they start on their journey into adulthood and beyond. Contact us today to schedule your appointment.
This article is a service of Joshua Ryden, owner of Horizon Law Firm. We do not just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That's why we offer a Life and Legacy Planning session, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Life and Legacy Planning session and mention this article to find out how to get this $750 session at no charge.
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