College Bound? Or Not! Don’t Forget Critical Documents

There’s been a lot of coverage on restarting education this fall and you all may know college age children/grandchildren.

Whether or not they’ll be home or on campus or taking classes either live or virtually, one thing that has not changed is the need for basic estate planning documents for all adults 18 years or older (Financial Power of Attorney, Health Power of Attorney/Proxy and HIPAA Release forms).

This topic does not get a lot of coverage, if any, and yet remains critically important.  Click here  – College Bound – for more information on why it’s important for young adults and click here – 3 Health-Related Legal Documents Everyone Needs  – for what you should have yourself.

Learning from home does not change the fact that someone is 18 years or older.  In fact, as we pointed out during the initial months of COVID lockdown last year, being cooped up at home offers an opportunity to finally get any documents you’re missing in order.

If you make the time to have your child get these documents prepared, then take the time to do it yourself as well or, better yet, do it together.   The effort could be a productive family activity and perhaps open up the conversation to other financial topics that your children likely need to be educated about.

I went through this process with my college bound freshman son last summer, which elicited not only a lot of questions and discussion on the decisions he needed to make within the documents he was signing, but also about whether to add some of his summer earnings to his Roth IRA, how to invest the same, what’s going on in the economy and leading stock market indices, as well as how to deal with health insurance under our family plan if he has any issues while he is away at school.

These issues are all easy to overlook within the myriad of other enrollment, orientation and packing/move-in-date processes that are involved with initial transition to college.

If you have any questions or if you are curious about how prepared you are from an estate planning perspective, reach out to your ACM Wealth Advisor.

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