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Mar 15, 2022

3 Legal Documents Every Teenager Needs

Paul: Hello everybody, thanks for jumping on Wealth Protector TV and this is Paul, you know me. I’m here with my colleague Kraig Strom, Kraig, happy Thursday. 

Kraig: Happy Thursday, Paul. 

Paul: All right so, if you’ve listened to us before, we do this every single Thursday, 9 a.m California time and we’re live streaming on YouTube Facebook LinkedIn, I think we’re on Twitter too, wherever you’re watching welcome and the show is all about providing value for you, and educating you, and helping you with important planning matters and today really fired up for this topic, we’re talking about  the documents that every single teenager needs to have, I got four kids Kraig, and you have kids and you know this is important to us, and we get a lot of questions about this from our clients and we have 6 000 clients across the country so very busy firm, Asset Protection, Estate Planning, Business Planning, that’s who we are and so, let’s

get ready to jump into this be eye-opening glad you’re here. 

Paul: Okay Kraig, take it away, let’s jump into this, tell me about these documents.

Kraig:  All right so, many of the people watching this are just the situation you and I are in Paul, where they’ve got a son or daughter, multiple kids that are either college right now in that old station what they got for Christmas or they’re going to be dropped off coming up here to start the school year, and there’s a million things to get ready for that college adventure and these documents are missed every I got to talk to folks. 

Paul: I got to, I got to stop you right now, because you just reminded me that when I was growing up we had a ford falcon station wagon, and me and my three brothers, get into that thing no seat belts we’d be jumping around and drive from Southern California to Oregon every summer for to see family so, 

Kraig: Exactly! 

Paul: Good memory. 

Kraig: Now, Now, back when you were fighting for the rear-facing window seat and the ford falcon, the, this was not an issue this number one document that every teenager should bring to college with them, this wasn’t an issue because the health insurance privacy and portability act, was not a thing back when you and I were kids Paul HIPAA is a real thing today, that health insurance privacy act, that’s the key, privacy, if you’ve got an 18 year old going off to college technically an adult, which means their health insurance records conversations are all private and confidential, and if something happens to your son or daughter while they’re traveling or off at college, if you do not have a HIPAA release, a HIPAA release that says that you’re allowed to get information about their medical conditions, their medical treatments, and records the doctors and hospitals will share zero information with parents, even though you’re the parent, without a court order or a HIPAA form, the hospitals won’t share any information.

Paul:  Yeah, and this is a big deal because most parents don’t know this, and it happens and especially with the covid thing that went on, and kids got sick in college we saw real examples of that so, it’s, it’s no joke. 

Kraig: No joke at all so, the two options that I mentioned there were one, a court order right which costs anywhere from eight to ten thousand dollars in legal work and months of processing or spend a few hundred dollars getting the documents you need in order, one of those number one being the HIPAA release that authorization to be able to get information about your child son or daughter’s medical information so, that’s document number one.

Paul: And Kraig that’s just dealing with you one-on-one or anybody that’s in you know, somebody has a relationship with but it’s basically, you having a discussion asking questions describing and then getting that form filled out and it’s in order, and they have it, is that right? 

Kraig: Absolutely, that’s exactly right Paul yes, all right, let’s jump into number two.

Paul: Number two.

Kraig: Right so, number two ties directly in with the HIPAA release and that is the healthcare power of attorney, also called an advanced health care directive, a medical directive this is the document that goes into more detail about what you, as an individual might want to happen if you were out of commission, if you were unconscious and in terrible situations if you were not coming back, meaning let’s say you were in a hospital being kept alive by machines, the healthcare power of attorney lays out and tells the story of what you want to happen now, this is a situation where again if you have an adult, over 18 year old child that’s off at college and something bad happens you and I talked about it last year Paul that we had someone in our close proximity that had a daughter in the hospital all of a sudden in a bad way,

Paul: Right,

Kraig: The healthcare power of attorney, allows the parents to be able to make medical decisions for their child, on their behalf and to work with the doctors, that health care power of attorney is critical could even include, end-of-life decisions, that without the power of attorney

parents might be completely closed out.

Paul: Yeah, and that’s interesting because it can come up too, if you’ve got a child, who’s got medical issues, right, I mean maybe a kid, is on medication and you’re working with you know you know as a minor you’ve been working with the doctors and let’s say your kid’s seeing a psychiatrist and there’s you know, medication to control whatever’s going on and then all sudden they’re 18, but you know you know the story a kid that goes to 17 to 18 isn’t all automatically just an adult now I mean they still need you know parents helping out so this is where this matters you know you got a kid in that situation get this going. 

Kraig: Absolutely yeah, it happens fast as well, that you know one day, my daughter was 14 years old and the next thing you know she’s telling me that she’s passed yet another advanced medical class for her nursing degree and like where did the time go and for the record we have the appropriate documents even to this day, she is almost entirely off our payroll, but she’s living off in another state and we still have these power of attorney documents, in place, just in case. 

Paul: Yeah, and they’re never off the payroll by the way, you know that’s not true, 

Kraig: Okay, Okay, got you, you’ve got a few more than me, thank you for the bad news, Paul I appreciate it.

Paul: Okay, you get that phone call hey, great to hear from you hi I love you Pop, I love you pop oh, here it comes. 

Kraig: Oh now, let’s get, let’s, let’s make sure that I don’t miss, the third document, and I’ve got two bonus one’s for you, Paul, bonus things to share, but let me give you the third one, the third one is, a durable power of attorney for financial matters now, the durable power of attorney for healthcare is specifically for parents, to be able to communicate with the medical field, the durable power of attorney for financial matters is exactly that, it is the document that allows parents to be able to take care of their child’s financial matters, for example student aid, scholarships, dealing with the university themselves, I’ll tell you, that we had that issue, that when my daughter was old enough, that the university now, started saying oh we can’t talk to you. 

Paul: Right. 

Kraig: The power of attorney well, thankfully we had all the powers of attorney ready, and we emailed him right over so, that we can get information about the money we are spending at the college that’s the crazy thing, that we were spending money at the college but, the college wouldn’t talk to us because our child was now over 18 and we needed the power of attorney.

Paul: I know, I know, no, I know I know what you’re talking about so, the financial power of attorney yeah, it’s for everything forever every financial decision.

Kraig: Yes, my daughter is renting a home with her boyfriend in Flagstaff Arizona. what if something happened to the two of them and I needed to be able to communicate with the landlord or her bank or any of those things, I would need a power of attorney to do it. 

Paul: That’s a great point, that’s a great point and Kraig is a financial power of attorney again, it’s a document you fill out and the person that you put on the financial power attorney doesn’t necessarily need to be the same person, for medical directive, like, what if you’re, you know divorced or you got one parent or like how do you figure that out.

Kraig: That’s an excellent, excellent, question and a great point to bring up, Paul that I’ve seen it, our attorneys at our firm have seen it, I’m sure that you’ve heard of these situations as well, many times, where the financial power of attorney might be dad, and the health care power of attorney, might be sister or brother because, mom or dad is just too emotional to be the power of attorney for health care decisions especially, end of life decisions, it’s just too difficult so, selecting that person, does take some consideration right, really some, sometimes, some really fine consideration to think, who’s going to be the best person in that potentially very awkward and difficult stressful situation to be in charge of your affairs whether they be medical or financial.

Paul: Right, right, 

Kraig: Yeah.

Kraig: Do you want my bonus content? 

Paul: Yes, bonus content, yeah.

Kraig: All right so, we had three documents that every college kid really should have, and by the way, they are not terribly expensive, we offer this to our clients for their kids all the time definitely get on the calendar for one of our free assessments and just talk about it, maybe, even include it in the conversation about your own planning but don’t miss it so, bonus item number one document is an emergency contact list, do you have your son or daughter’s cell phone password, do you have that information where you could get access to all their contacts, well, if you don’t as a parent, it’s likely that they’re friends and close companions don’t have it either so making sure that emergency personnel, school personnel people nearby have access to an emergency contact list so, that they know who to call, who to get in touch with for your son or daughter that’s a very important one to have readily available, and not hiding in an iPhone. 

Paul: Got it, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, okay, great, great bonus, good got together that’s great advice. 

Kraig: One more, medical specifics now, you can have a health care power of attorney and you can have a HIPAA authorization, what is usually not included in those documents, is the granular details, perhaps, about a son or daughter’s medical condition, it’s always important to have something of a record of allergies, blood type, any particular conditions and things to make sure that, that kind of information if there’s something serious, to make sure that, medical personnel, make sure that friends, people at school could have access to that information so, that you know your son or daughter gets the best treatment and doesn’t get medication that they’re allergic to, for example so, always important to have that laid out. 

Paul: Great, yeah, no great advice, bonus document, okay very good.

Kraig: Yeah so, emergency contact list and medical specifics, I like to call it making sure that’s important, and then just a few final points here about these documents for your kids that, these forums really should be updated on a regular basis, kids grow up they change schools, they change jobs, they may or may not get married, it’s important to take a look at these on a regular basis perhaps yearly to that these documents are still appropriate, to make sure that the representatives are still the right people, in the right positions, and it’s important also to double check with your, your son or daughter’s school, to make sure that they’re going to accept for example, here in California or of attorney for and financial matters, that was written here in California, her school and everybody in Arizona accepts that is fine, it’s important to make sure that your son or daughter’s school, financial institutions, will accept your potentially out-of-state document, always good to check that. 

Paul: Right love it, love it, love it.

Kraig: Yeah, that’s it, it’s, it’s a, it’s, a tough one to think about but it’s really good to know that you’re prepared for something that will never happen, likely never happen but it’s good. 

Paul: Love it Kraig as always great information and what I put up there on the screen is, we always we always want to offer a complimentary planning assessment to anybody that takes the time to watch our videos, we put out a lot of content and you can get one-on-one with Kraig and the team to get input on your situation, estate planning, asset protection, these documents we’re talking about here and we’ll do we’ll zoom it, and what you want to do is text guard assets to that phone number when you do that you’ll get access to a calendar where you can pick a time, get one-on-one with us we’ll give you the input, and the whole idea behind this is to help you get organized, updated and protected we’ll give you our observations recommendations tell you how tell you how to do it it’s great Kraig thank you so much great to have you and everybody thanks for joining and remember every Thursday 9 a.m California time right here on LinkedIn YouTube Facebook twitter we’re out there in the sphere Kraig we’re everywhere where’s Kraig, where’s, he’s everywhere.

Kraig: I bet, I bet Paul’s on myspace, for crying out loud/ 

Paul: You’re just dating. 

Kraig: Thanks Paul. 

Paul: Right, thank you, we’ll see you next time.

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