Must-Do Planning: Young adult Children

It's the time of year when a lot of young people (and their parents & grandparents) are thinking about graduations, proms, colleges & post-high school graduate life.  But just because they are 18 doesn't mean they're not still your babies. In fact, you need to help them out a bit more.

Attorney Siobhan Kinealy joins us on SPi  to discuss the Young Adult Program, which covers necessary documents for adult children in the event of an incapacity: stepping into their shoes to make sure their financial needs and healthcare needs are met.

April 18, 2023

Transcript

Neel:
Plan-it for April 18th, 2023 a day that will live in infamy because today is tax filing deadline day. For those of you who got it done earlier because it was April 15th, it's kinda like that feeling of like, Waking up before your alarm and then you get to bonus hours of sleep. But for those of you who haven't gotten it done, you're probably going on extension today.

So either get it done or go on extension and if you have, ADA or concerns about it, then certainly you can reach out to us or we can put you in the hands of somebody who might be able to help. But, but yeah, it's over today. Now I will say, I'm gonna introduce our, our guest who's not really a guest, in a couple minutes.

But, I will say that an important thing to note about today's deadline, you know, after the deadline passes, it's tempting to just basically say, Hey, we're done with this. Peace out. I'll stress out about it again in January. The best time in my opinion to take on some sort of planning project, whether it's tax planning or financial planning or estate planning, is a lot of times like right when you've got your taxes filed, cuz you're right on top of your finances.

You got everything that's sort of like buttoned up there even if you don't take action on it right away. A good opportunity to just start and get something on the calendar to talk about that sort of planning. And speaking of planning, we are joined here by our estate planning attorney extraordinaire, Shon Kaeli Chevon.

Thanks for being on. Pleasure Neel. Thank you. So it's her first. Definitely not her last, but Shivon is our esteemed trust and estates attorney, and this happens to be, we are coming up on two weeks from decision day. For those of you who know me, I, you know, I've got a daughter in college finishing up her first year, and a son who's about to start college next year.

And, as they graduate high school, these kids, they tend to grow up and they become adults. And when they're no longer minors and they become adults, there's a different set of things we need to be worried about. There's a lot of stuff we need to be worried about, but there's some legal documents in particular that we tend to prioritize, so, Chevon, I'm gonna kick this over to you. And before we do Chevon, you've got an interesting sort of college experience cuz not all of your college, not all of your education was in the us Where was undergrad for you? 

Siobhan:
Yeah, that's right. So I went to my first undergrad at the University of Essex in the uk and then I did, so I did history as my major and then I went back to school and I did another major in law.

So I have an English law degree and an American law degree. 

Neel:
Look at that across overseas. And I've gotta ask like, the biggest difference between the two education programs. What's your biggest takeaway? 

Siobhan:
Well I didn't start until mid, so early to mid-October. So when I came to America for law school, there's many, many changes, many, many differences.

When I came to America for law school, I could not believe that I was losing half my summer to go back and sit in class in mid August. That is a big 

Neel:
difference. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. Well, I mean, Rutgers tends to be one of the later schools. I, they, they start after like Labor Day. But a lot of colleges, like, especially like Penn State or Midwest schools, they, they'll start right in the middle of August.

So as we have these kids, whether it's August or September heading off to school, or as we have high school graduates turning 18, or even high school kids turning 18, What are these legal documents that we talk about that we need to have in place for these kids? 

Siobhan:
Yeah, absolutely. So, 18 is a really big change for us and, for many parents, they don't necessarily notice right off the bat.

If your kids are home, you still might be calling up the pediatrician and making the, the appointments that you always were. But the note you do maybe start to notice it when they go off either to s you know, maybe they're. Teaching at summer camp. So they're going away to college. So this is the time that you start to plan.

And those documents really come down to three core, three core documents. So the first is gonna be the power of attorney, and it really allows you to step into their shoes and to,  make financial and other decisions for them. Call up their bank, pay a bill for them. The ones that we draft over here have the The electronic, ability as well.

So if you need to jump on and suspend a Facebook account or do something like that,  we are always allowing for those things and hoping, hoping that you'll never need them. Same with the, the medical. So again, we draft them for the worst case scenario, but they can also be really useful if you're, if you need to call up and make an appointment being able to step in as the proxy for your child.

And then the third is the HIPAA allowing you to get. Medical records get a second opinion, access those documents. What you may not realize is that you just can't do it once they're 18. You may have been allowed to and it sort of maybe slipped through the cracks once they go away to college. Or once somebody who isn't in your normal sphere of, you know, that you talk to regularly, like the pediatrician in the office, yeah.

You may run into problems before you realize it. 

Neel:
That's great. So yeah, I mean, I, I think it's. Spot on. We, for those of you who kind of subscribed to our YouTube channel, you know, we did videos on this like, I wanna say maybe four or five years ago. Definitely more real for me now. But look, just cuz, just cuz they're adults doesn't mean they're not still your babies.

They are, but legally speaking, yeah, you don't have, if, if there were an illness or if they were not able to manage their own finances or if they were unable to manage their own healthcare situation, you as a a parent, just being a parent doesn't give you the legal right to do so necessarily. So there's all these hoops you have to jump through.

So the three documents you just talked about was the financial power of attorney, the healthcare power of attorney, and the HIPAA authorization, which is really more for the privacy act and making sure that you can have access to these records. You mentioned the pediatrician too. I didn't realize the pediatricians will actually see kids until what I think 2021 or something like that in some cases.

So it's not, there's all these different rules associated with that too. You know, one of the concerns that I hear about this, I don't know if you hear this as much will that mean that my parents can view my Snapchat or, or that sort of stuff? So to be clear, we're not talking about help financial powers of attorney that give parents access directly, right?

Because you could do this in a way, That you're not giving the parents, or maybe they don't wanna give it to the parents, they wanna give it to a sibling or somebody else, but we're not letting them have access to it right away in most cases. Right, right. Unless they want that. Right. So 

Siobhan:
we can build it in a couple of different ways, right?

But what might allay some of the fears of an 18 year old is that we can certainly build these documents to be triggered upon in capacity. So if you, you know, fell and bumped your head, let's say you're at college, you. Whatever happens, that we can build documents that allow your parents or whoever your point, to step into your shoes only in that extreme situation. And again, you know, we're talking about sort of some tough situations to consider with your kids.  But we can also build them out to say, listen, I have this document. It exists, it appoints you, mom or dad, but you don't have to have it right now if it's needed. I can tell you where it is. I can, you know, you can get it over to you.

Do you need to go into my bank branch and go speak to the manager while I'm away at college? So there's a couple of different ways that we can make it kind of custom fit the 

Neel:
situation. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, so the, what you described there is, is the very sort of traditional path that we need, those financial powers of attorney healthcare, but there's so many non-traditional ones too.

Like people forget that in most states, like New Jersey or New York or Pennsylvania, like when the child reaches a certain age, if you have a U T M A or a custodian account, all of a sudden that becomes the kid's money. So it, you won't, you might not be able to access that or transact on that without it.

Or if you had purchased a life insurance policy and put that in the kids' names, that might be it. And you know, I feel like kids are investing in crypto or NFTs or sneakers quite frankly. It could have a sneaker business like that seems to be a big thing. Or their own websites. All those things need to be, accounted for in these legal documents.

Right. So it's not just the traditional stuff, but it's these non-traditional ones too. Yeah, absolutely. 

Siobhan:
And. Thankfully we draft ours very broadly, in order to kind of accommodate for all of those interesting little quirks that you never know. You never know. Kids are surprising. I mean, I'm not in the stage where I have kids that are, investing in sneakers, but I certainly am always surprised by my kids.

So you want the flexibility to really be able to deal with whatever they throw 

Neel:
at you. Yeah, yeah, that's right. So, you know, there there's gonna be some other sort of non, obvious considerations that come up. And I'll say particularly with, you know, not to get too risque here, but even with females sometimes with reproductive rights and knowing what the parents' rights are there too.

So there might be reasons why they might feel comfortable with one parent and not the other, or not having the parents at all there too. So all conversations to have. Shivon is one of the most ethical people that I know and one of the most conscientious attorneys that I know. So I always gotta ask this question or I gotta remind clients of this, but I'll ask you, Shivon, I'll put you on the spot.

Who's our client when when we're doing these powers of attorney and these healthcare powers of attorneys, hip authorizations for, for these minors that are not minors anymore? Yeah, 

Siobhan:
that's a great question. So if we are drafting, these documents, For a principal, for, for the person giving away the right, they are our clients.

So, anybody who we're gonna draft the documents for. So remember the documents. If you are the parent of an 18 or a newly 18 year old, it will be that 18 year old who is the client. They will be the principal, they will be the person saying, I just got this huge bundle of rights at 18. This is great, but I'm gonna give a couple of things away, or at least allow my parents to.

You know, step in and use a couple of these bundles of rights on my behalf for my best interests. Yeah. So they are our clients. 

Neel:
So just the fact that the parents have paid for our services possibly does not necessarily mean that they are our clients for this particular piece of it, right? Absolutely.

Yeah, exactly. Excellent. So, Chevon, thank you so much. For those of you watching this on April 18th, 2023, congrats. You made it through the tax season. Remember, in addition to the young adult program, it's time to do any of the other planning that you have. This is the perfect time to do it cuz you've already got.

Your ducks in a row. Hopefully from a financial standpoint. We do have a one, sorry, two page questionnaire. Is it a one page question or two page questioner or a young adult program questionnaire? Do you It's a question. I think it's either, I guess it depends on the font size, but it's not a lot. It, it's, you know, I think it's probably one to two pages most, if you're interested in that questionnaire, if you wanna learn a little bit more about the young adult program that includes these documents.

If you are one of our clients, we might actually even include it in your existing plan. So definitely reach out to us. If you have any questions on this or anything else, but if that's not it, I looking forward to seeing Chevon on future episodes of Shah Plan-it. Thank you all for watching. Stay safe watch out for those April showers that will soon bring those May flowers and we will see you next week on s sh Plan-it. Bye everybody.