The 4 Legal Documents Your College-Age Child Really Needs
Without these pieces in place, you could be locked out of decision-making for your over-18 son or daughter in a health care or financial emergency.

Your college-age child may still be your baby, but once he or she turns 18, the law says they’re an adult. That means they get to make their own decisions and suffer the consequences of their mistakes. It also means you’re not automatically contacted by the hospital or the credit card company if they run into trouble, and you no longer have the right to make legal and medical decisions on their behalf.
Your child’s college or university might provide you with a Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) waiver. While helpful, a FERPA waiver only gives you access to, and the right to discuss, your child’s grades. What you really need are legal documents more often associated with senior citizens than seniors in school: a living will, HIPAA authorization form, health care proxy and a general durable power of attorney.
These documents aren’t just used for estate planning. Together, they serve as a vital safety net now that your child is legally an adult and away from home. These documents will give you the authority as a parent to make health care decisions or manage money for your child after he or she hits the age of 18.

Sign up for Kiplinger’s Free E-Newsletters
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and more - straight to your e-mail.
Profit and prosper with the best of expert advice - straight to your e-mail.
Here’s an overview of the four key documents you will need.
Living Will
This document has an unfortunate name. It differs from a last will and testament, which details your wishes and instructions after you die. A living will, also sometimes called an advance directive, explains the care you want — or don’t want — when you’re still alive but unconscious. So, if your son or daughter, heaven forbid, falls into a permanent vegetative state due to, for example, a terminal illness or accident, the living will makes explicit whether he or she wants to be kept on life support. It also lays out whether he or she wants, say, tube feeding, pain medication and other care specifics. The living will saves you and your adult child’s health care providers from guessing what he or she would want.
HIPAA Authorization Form
Without a HIPAA authorization form, your child could be stuck in the emergency room after an accident, and you may be unable to find out their condition. HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, is a federal law that safeguards who can access an adult’s private health data. A HIPAA authorization, signed by your adult child and naming you as an authorized party, will give you the ability to ask for and receive information from health care providers about his or her health status, progress and treatment.
Health Care Proxy
Say your child is unconscious in the hospital. A health care power of attorney document naming you as their “medical agent” gives you the ability to view his or her medical records and make informed medical decisions on his or her behalf. Without a health care proxy, your child’s diagnosis and treatment will be left in the hands of health care providers. While this might not sound like a terrible thing, no one knows your child's health history and preferences better than you. A health care proxy gives you the right to participate in medical decision making.
General Durable Power of Attorney
A durable power of attorney grants you the authority to sign documents on behalf of your child to handle any financial or legal matters. The signed form gives you authority to take care of tasks such as: renewing his or her car registration, managing financial accounts held in their name or filing a tax return on their behalf. A power of attorney can be especially helpful if your child goes overseas to study or for a gap year.
What’s at Stake
These documents are meant to prevent the confusion and chaos that so often accompany tragedies. Even after all my years as a lawyer, I’m still shocked sometimes by accounts in the media — and by situations that occasionally arise among my own clients — of family conflicts that could have been avoided by proper planning.
Family members have actually resorted to litigation over terminating life support for an individual who does not have a living will. I’ve worked with parents who needed to petition the court to become guardian and conservator for their disabled child in order to apply for government programs, such as Medicaid and SSDI. And I’ve seen situations where children have been in accidents and their parents were unable to receive information about their health status, which resulted in a great deal of anxiety for them until things got sorted out.
The medical power of attorney is also very helpful to parents who need to receive information regarding a son’s or daughter’s mental health issues and treatment. Let’s say your son started to seriously struggle with the workload in his first year of college, started falling behind, started becoming dangerously despondent. The story doesn’t have a happy ending (you can read about it in this New York Times article), but it’s full of difficult lessons about the tension between privacy and accountability.
Annoyingly, front-line employees of some institutions, like banks and hospitals, are trained to challenge the authority of some documents due to a fear of liability. Your attorney can engage that institution’s legal department and, if necessary, provide a legal opinion regarding the validity of the document and the statutory basis requiring the institution to honor it. I find that the institution usually then complies.
These four documents are vital, because life can get messy. But if you’re nervous about setting anything in stone — fearing that life circumstances for you or your adult children might change — don’t worry. They’re all revocable.
Profit and prosper with the best of Kiplinger's advice on investing, taxes, retirement, personal finance and much more. Delivered daily. Enter your email in the box and click Sign Me Up.

Foster Friedman concentrates on planning and controversy matters involving estates and trusts. He has extensive experience advising clients on the transfer of wealth from one generation to another, including the orderly and tax-efficient succession of family-owned businesses, through the preparation and implementation of wills, trusts, family limited partnerships and LLCs.
-
Amtrak Joins Prime Day With Deals on Fares — But You’ll Have to Act Fast
Prime members can score 20% off midweek fares — what travelers should know before booking.
-
Mississippi Tax-Free Weekend 2025 Is Here: What to Know Before You Shop
Tax Holiday Just in time for Prime Day, Mississippi is celebrating a tax holiday in July. Find out how you can save on back-to-school essentials.
-
Key to Financial Peace of Mind: Think 'What's Next?' Rather Than 'What If?'
Even if you've hit your magic number for retirement, it's hard to stop worrying about money. Giving it a clear purpose is one way to reduce financial anxiety.
-
Three Estate Planning Documents a Business Owner Can't Afford to Skip
A business owner's estate plan should protect the company and its employees as well as the entrepreneur's heirs. These three documents are critical.
-
Financial Fact vs Fiction: Why Your 'Magic Number' Isn't Actually Magical
Do you think you're diversified if you're invested in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq? Do you think your tax rate will fall in retirement? Think again — and read on for other myths that could be leading you astray.
-
Opportunity Zones: An Expert Guide to the Changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill
The law makes opportunity zones permanent, creates enhanced tax benefits for rural investments and opens up new strategies for investors to combine community development with significant tax advantages.
-
Five Ways Retirees Can Keep Perspective Through Market Jitters
Market volatility is a recurring event with historical precedents (the dot-com bubble, global financial crisis and pandemic), each followed by recovery. Here's how people who are near or in retirement can navigate economic uncertainty.
-
I'm a Financial Strategist: This Is the Investment Trap That Keeps Smart Investors on the Sidelines
Forget FOMO. FOGI — Fear of Getting In — is the feeling you need to learn how to manage so you don't miss out on future investment gains.
-
Can You Be a Good Parent to an Only Child When You're Also a Business Owner?
Author and social psychologist Susan Newman offers advice to business-owner parents on how to raise a well-adjusted single child by avoiding overcompensation and encouraging chores.
-
How Advisers Can Steer Their Clients Through Market Volatility (and Strengthen Their Relationships)
Financial advisers need to be strategic when they communicate with clients during market volatility. The goal is to not only reassure them but to also help them avoid rash decisions, deepen your relationship with them and build lasting trust.