Richard Morgan, Morgan and DiSalvo.

When your young adult children go off to college, like any other adult, they need certain level of estate planning. They don’t have a whole lot of assets, if any. They don’t need all the full blown estate plan, but they do need some basic documents. What do they need? They need two agency documents. Number one, a financial power of attorney, so that anything financial can be done on their behalf if need be. But even more importantly, under Georgia law, it’s called the Advanced Directive for Healthcare, in different states it’s called different things, but you’re basically appointing an agent, be one of the parents, to deal with your healthcare matters.

So think about if your child end up getting in an accident, ends up in the hospital, when your child is 18 years old, they’re an adult, doctors don’t talk to you. So in order to be able to deal with doctors and deal on someone’s behalf, you need a healthcare directive or that healthcare agency document. On the financial side as well, the school will not talk to you as a parent. Having that document may allow you some access to student, your child’s information, when normally you will know nothing that’s going on, unless your child tells you.

Richard Morgan, Morgan and DiSalvo.