Your Rights As The Parent Of A Young Adult — What You Need To Know When A Medical Crisis Hits

As a parent, you are quite accustomed to managing your children's legal and medical affairs as circumstances require. If your child requires urgent medical attention while away from you, a simple phone call authorizing care can do the trick. But what happens when those “children” turn 18, now adults in the eyes of the law, and need urgent medical attention far from home?

The simple fact is that the day your child turns 18, he or she becomes an adult and has the legal rights of an adult. This means that you lose your prior held rights to make medical and financial decisions for your child unless your child executes legal documents giving you those rights back. Without the proper legal documents, accessing medical information and even being informed about your adult child’s medical condition can be difficult and, in some cases, impossible.

Anne Heche Dies With Conflict Around Her Will, Leaving Her Sons & Estate In Legal Limbo—Part 2

Actress Anne Heche died this August following a tragic car accident, leaving behind two young sons: Homer Heche Laffoon, age 20, and Atlas Heche Tupper, age 13.

Last week, in part one, we covered the way uncertainty around Heche’s estate plan is creating conflict among her loved ones and resulting in her estate going through the lengthy, expensive, and public court process called probate. In part two, we’ll discuss two additional issues related to Heche’s death and the results of her failure to work with a lawyer on her planning.

3 Reasons Why Single Folks With No Children Need An Estate Plan

These days, more and more young people are delaying—if not totally foregoing—a life that involves marriage and parenting. The lack of jobs, crushing student debt, multiple recessions, and the pandemic have pushed many young people into a life path that leaves little room for settling down with a partner and getting married—and even less room for having children. Yet, for other young adults, staying single and childless is simply a matter of choice. Regardless of the reason, as more young adults opt for non-traditional lifestyles, the number of single childless households is likely to steadily increase in the coming years.

While most adults don’t take estate planning as seriously as they should, if you are single with no children, you might think that there’s really no need for you to worry about creating an estate plan. But this is a huge mistake. In fact, it can be even MORE important to have an estate plan if you are single and childless.

Don't Let Your Kids Leave Home Without Signing These 3 Documents

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.

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 three documents.

One of The Greatest Gifts To Your Family Is The Plan For Incapacity

When it comes to estate planning, most people automatically think about taking legal steps to ensure the right people inherit their stuff when they die. Although that thought is not wrong, it also leaves out a very important piece of planning for life, and perhaps the most critical part of planning.

Planning that’s focused solely on who gets what when you die is ignoring the fact that death isn’t the only thing you must prepare for. Rather, consider that at some point before your eventual death, you could be incapacitated by accident or illness.

Like death, each of us is at constant risk of experiencing a devastating accident or disease that renders us incapable of caring for ourselves or our loved ones. But unlike death, which is by definition a final outcome, incapacity comes with an uncertain outcome and timeframe.

Incapacity can be a temporary event from which you eventually recover, or it can be the start of a long and costly event that ultimately ends in your death. Indeed, incapacity can drag out over many years, leaving you and your family in agonizing limbo. This uncertainty is what makes incapacity planning so incredibly important.