Every August, our office gets a version of the same phone call. A parent is standing in a dorm room at UMD or Towson (or worse yet, sitting in a parking lot two hours away) realizing that the university bursar won't discuss a $4,000 billing error because their 18-year-old child is officially an adult under the law.
It sounds bizarre and feels like it couldn’t happen. You just paid for their dorm, bought their extra-long twin sheets, and drove them to campus. But the day your child turns 18, their legal status changes instantly. Under federal laws like HIPAA and state privacy regulations, healthcare providers, banks, and universities view parents as legal strangers, even if the student is still on your family health insurance.
Let’s say a medical emergency happens on campus: your kid breaks their leg playing club sports and ends up in the local ER. Doctors cannot give you medical updates or let you weigh in on treatment without prior written authorization. If they catch a bad case of mono midway through the fall and miss two weeks of classes, you can't contact the registrar or landlord on their behalf to iron things out.
You don't need a complex estate plan to fix this, but your child does need a few specific documents drafted before move-in day:
Because legal requirements vary across Maryland, D.C., and Virginia, it is crucial to ensure these forms are legally valid where your student actually lives and studies.
A practical tip we give all our clients: Once these are signed and notarized, scan them into a PDF and keep a favorited copy saved in the files app on both your phone and your student's phone. This is what we do when we create these documents for our clients.
If your teenager is heading to campus this fall, get this squared away. Give our office a call at (410) 497-5947 or fill out our contact form to set up a quick consultation before packed trunks and orientation schedules take over.
Every August, our office gets a version of the same phone call. A parent is standing in a dorm room at UMD or Towson (or worse yet, sitting in a parking lot two hours away) realizing that the university bursar won't discuss a $4,000 billing error because their 18-year-old child is officially an adult under the law.
It sounds bizarre and feels like it couldn’t happen. You just paid for their dorm, bought their extra-long twin sheets, and drove them to campus. But the day your child turns 18, their legal status changes instantly. Under federal laws like HIPAA and state privacy regulations, healthcare providers, banks, and universities view parents as legal strangers, even if the student is still on your family health insurance.
Let’s say a medical emergency happens on campus: your kid breaks their leg playing club sports and ends up in the local ER. Doctors cannot give you medical updates or let you weigh in on treatment without prior written authorization. If they catch a bad case of mono midway through the fall and miss two weeks of classes, you can't contact the registrar or landlord on their behalf to iron things out.
You don't need a complex estate plan to fix this, but your child does need a few specific documents drafted before move-in day:
Because legal requirements vary across Maryland, D.C., and Virginia, it is crucial to ensure these forms are legally valid where your student actually lives and studies.
A practical tip we give all our clients: Once these are signed and notarized, scan them into a PDF and keep a favorited copy saved in the files app on both your phone and your student's phone. This is what we do when we create these documents for our clients.
If your teenager is heading to campus this fall, get this squared away. Give our office a call at (410) 497-5947 or fill out our contact form to set up a quick consultation before packed trunks and orientation schedules take over.
