In Florida as in most states, age eighteen is the age of majority.  Your progeny can contract, marry, vote, join the military, cannot drink until 21, but do have privacy rights.  Yes, even from you.  Their University, School or College cannot provide any privacy protected information to you, including health, grades, class attendance or anything else.  A call in the night to inform you that your child has been injured (you were on the Emergency Notification), followed by the statement that they cannot disclose anything more, is seriously distressing.  It is even more distressing if that educational institution is a long distance away.  So what can you do?

 Now, before the migration back to higher learning takes place, consider that if your child executes a Durable Power of Attorney, Health Care Designation (called a Health Care Power of Attorney, Authority or Surrogacy – all mean the same), and Living Will, these concerns are generally resolved, because you will have the authority to be informed, and to act on your child’s behalf.  You could add a Will to the list, although that is more of an education in responsibility than a necessity.  Most states provide that the parents are default beneficiaries, and few college age children have much in the way of assets.

 Your family or estate planning attorney can quickly prepare these documents; the young generally have simple issues.  Call, but be prepared to provide the responses as to who will be named with authority under each document.  Probably that will be you as parents, and possibly an older brother or sister, or another relative as a backup in case you aren’t available.  Remember that it is your child’s choice, not yours.  Of course, they may prefer going to college than being out on the street, so you do have some influence.  Once executed, the documents are usually scanned to PDF files, and can be sent to the institution when needed.  The cost to prepare these documents is much less than a plane ticket or lost workday, traveling with the fear that your child needs you.

You may wish to consider our posting at http://www.strattonlaw.com/archives/214 for further thoughts.

If you have no family, friends or favorite charities, AND you have little or no assets and don’t expect to have this change anytime soon, skip this and read something else.  If you have some assets  and people (or a charity, school or similar institution) you care about, then here are our thoughts:

1. A Will, and if you have minor children, guardians are named, and maybe a “standby trust” to manage assets for the children;
2. Durable Power of Attorney
3. Health Care Power of Attorney or Surrogacy
4. Living Will
5. In our office, we also add an Authority to Dispose of Remains – for the choices of burial, cremation, and other directions.  These choices are some of the most difficult for the survivors.

If your assets are sufficient, you may wish to create one or more trusts during your lifetime.  If you have any significant life insurance, possibly one of these trusts would be to hold your life insurance to keep it out of you estate for Federal Estate Tax purposes.  For larger levels of assets, it is often very useful to interpose an entity or entities to hold logical sets of assets for management and liability protection, and to have those entities owned by one or more of the trusts you have created.  There are additional, specialized techniques which provide tax incentives and retirement structures, but the main list is above.

The process may be simple and direct, or quite elaborate and extend over time.  The purposes served are for management, tax efficiency, liability protection, convenience and control as to beneficiaries, and for expedited transfer of authority upon death.  Indirectly, this process creates structure and organization leading to financial efficiencies.  In all instances, the core documents are the same, and the enhanced planning has specific and determinable benefits and purposes.

If you are single and sharing your life with a “significant other,” you MUST state your wishes in writing, or else.  The law will not protect your unwritten informal declarations.  You may wish to look at our article, “Living Together” at http://www.strattonlaw.com/archives/5 in this Web Site. 

Children who have recently become age 18 have special problems.  We refer you to the our article, at http://www.strattonlaw.com/archives/295 entitled “It was a Very Good Year”.  Remember that these, your children now have independence under law, and privacy rights.