Hi, I'm Eric Beutel and today I wanna talk about college-aged students and your young adult children who maybe aren't in college and what kind of planning they need.
I have the pleasure of guiding people as the leaders of their families to build a legacy and create peace of mind. I'm an attorney and I focus my practice on estate planning, elder law, and probate.
As always, if you have questions about estate planning, elder law, or probate, you can book a time to talk to me. It's free. You can go to EricBeutel.com and there'll be a button you can click.
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So I wanted to talk to you, like I said, about college-aged students and your young adults who maybe aren't in college, but they're sort of leaving the nest, some of the documents that they need.
What kind of estate planning DO young adults need?
I have a son who we just recently dropped off at the University of Alabama, Roll Ride. He just turned 18 and there was a situation and not really a situation, but, you know, we were helping him to get everything ready, and my wife had called the doctor because my son needed his vaccination records to be sent to the school. That's just a part of the normal enrollment, and so my wife thought, okay, I can help handle this.
So she called the doctor and asked the doctor to send over the vaccination records, and the doctor, you know, did the usual, "What's his name?" "What's his birthdate?" And then look in the chart and said, "Oh, you know, "he just turned 18 so I can't send that to you. "You'll have to have your son call or you'll have "to send the power of attorney for him."
Power of Attorney
Well, I had the power of attorney drafted and everything, but we hadn't signed it yet, so anyway, that's one of the documents that you really should consider getting done for your young adult children, because they still require or still need your help, but not necessarily with everything, but in some cases like this, it just would have made things easier and quicker, not that he couldn't easily call the doctor himself.
Healthcare Power Of Attorney or Living Will
And then, you know, also would want a healthcare power of attorney or living will, depending on the state that you live in, sometimes they are two separate documents, here in Northern Kentucky, or in Kentucky, they're combined into one document, a living will, and healthcare surrogate, and that's the form that allows you as an agent, not anymore as a parent, but as the agent, if your child is in the hospital and couldn't make medical decisions for himself or herself, that you can step in without going to the court and asking the judge, "Can I have permission to make this decision for my child?"
Your child will have signed this as an adult here. She can actually sign this agreement saying, yes, I give my parents the right to make decisions for me if I'm incapacitated or can't make the decision myself.
So they're both very straightforward documents, but there is some work and thought that needs to be put into it.
So again, I mentioned that my son is going to the University of Alabama, most sort of standard form, if you will, power of attorney documents that you could get online, will have a lot of the relevant information in it and they'll say things like I give my agent my rights to make financial decisions. I give them the rights to buy stocks, trade stocks, buy real estate, those kinds of things.
But in our case, we wanted to have a special section on education. So, I can show this because it's my son's, but we put a special section in there on education, and it allows special opportunities.
If something were to happen to him, for example, I can go to the school and help with 504 type things, some of you may have heard about that, if you've gone through the education process, it allows me to arrange his classes.
If there becomes a reason for special needs kind of things I can step in and do that. So it allows me to continue to advocate for my son, but it also allows us the opportunity to just make sure that everything is going well for him.
And this isn't something that I'll use. I won't show up to school and be this helicopter parent, and just show up to school and use it.
But if the need arises, then I have it and I don't have to try to prove to the school that yes, this language means I can do this because in this case, I put a special section for education, that might not apply to your child, but there may be something else.
So when you sit down with an attorney to work on these documents, really think about all the different things that you are going through and may go through, and that you could possibly need and make sure that those are addressed in your power of attorney forms.
The online forms for this kind of thing usually are pretty good because there is standard language, but if you have any kind of a special circumstance, then you'll really want to make sure you talk to somebody and insert the specific language that will help you.
Last Will And Testament?
So those are the two main documents that you would want for your young adult children, the power of attorney, and also the living will or healthcare power of attorney, and then also as long as you're doing that, you might as well do a will, but you know, the will doesn't control until that child would pass away, which we don't like to think about, but it could happen. On the other hand, your child does not have probably a lot of assets at this point. So a will is not as necessary as these two living documents that we discussed.
So as always, if you have questions about any of this that I've talked about, about estate planning, incapacity planning, elder law, probate, reach out, I'm glad to talk.
We can schedule a 15-minute call, or you can schedule an in-office consultation, whatever works, just go to EricBeutel.com.
And don't forget to follow my YouTube channel. And if you know, somebody who could use this information, you know, somebody who has a young adult child, please feel free to send this video to them, share it with them on social media, or hit the like button on YouTube, and hopefully, they'll find it that way.
Thank you very much and I look forward to talking to you again, take care.