Sponsor spotlight: Children’s needs and parents’ authority

When children are young, it is very clear that parents have the right and responsibility to maintain those children and make their decisions. As children age, however, the boundaries become less clear regarding what actions a parent is legally authorized to take.

This comes up in a variety of ways, and each of them have certain complications for families.

Children in College

Washington defines adulthood (except as otherwise specifically provided by law) to start at age 18. When children go to college or strike out into adulthood at age 18, parents no longer have any legal right to manage their health care or finances. Children can block parents from their college records, health care records, and financial assets. If they have a medical emergency at college, parents are not necessarily authorized to make a decision about the care their children receive. Further, if the medical emergency leads to the child withdrawing from school, their parents may not even have authority to access their room and retrieve the child’s assets (computer, phone, bedding, furniture, etc.).

A simple solution is to encourage adult children to meet with an attorney and make proactive decisions. If the adult children are willing and able, they can prepare simple durable powers of attorney documents for health care and finances and a will. Further, they can prepare and submit transfer on death/beneficiary designations for all financial assets (checking/savings accounts, retirement accounts, life insurance, etc.). This conversation is a great way to encourage young adults to think forward about adult decisions. Any parent encouraging their child to make these decisions has to be prepared for the child to pick a non-parent as their decisions maker.

Individuals with Care Needs
When a child has severe autism, Angleman syndrome, or other long-term neurodevelopmental issue, parents care for them. Parents manage their needs throughout their lifetime and are intimately involved in their ongoing health care, social and emotional needs. Parents know these children and their needs, how to meet them, and how to advocate for the ongoing necessary care. Despite such needs, Washington’s law declaring people adults at age eighteen still applies. At age 18, doctors and medical providers are prohibited from communicating with the parents. Financial institutions with assets solely in the child’s name are not allowed to let anyone else access them.

Unfortunately, the answer here is not as simple as the children who go to college, but have full capacity to make decisions as a chronological adult. Here, if your child has sufficient ability, it may be possible to have them create and sign legal documents. More often parents must obtain a guardianship (personal care) or conservatorship (financial care) of the adult child. This is a legal action with a court order determining the legal capacity of the child, and determining which legal rights belong to the child and which legal rights belong to the appointed guardian/conservator. It includes a requirement for ongoing reporting to the court to ensure the legal welfare of that child.

Minors Left Valuable Assets
Parents can create financial accounts for their children and be the custodian of the accounts. If anyone dies and leaves assets directly to a minor (under age 18) without any plan in place, minors are prohibited from taking ownership of the assets.

The simplest solution to this issue is that anyone intending to leave assets to a minor can create a testamentary trust to form at their death (if the person is a minor), and leave the assets to the Trustee of that Trust. This includes creating beneficiary/transfer on death designations on all financial accounts that go to the trustee of the trust set out in your will (or other planning document). If that option is not possible or has not occurred, the options get more complicated and courts are likely to be involved.

If the assets are part of a probate estate, often the court will order that the assets be sold and placed into a blocked account that cannot be used for the child, which is distributed directly to the child at age eighteen. If the assets are financial accounts (IRAs, life insurance, etc.), the financial companies often refuse to give the assets to anyone unless a conservatorship is created. Even a parent of a minor child can be required to obtain a conservatorship over their own child, with the ongoing court reporting described above.

Children Turning 13 and Seeking Medical Treatments
There are a variety of different forms of health care that children can request without parental consent in the state of Washington on turning age 13. Those include things like mental health treatment, emergency treatment, birth control, prenatal care and substance abuse. These are not a full list of the treatments minors can seek, but are a smattering of the options. Parents may unexpectedly find out that their children’s medical provider will not allow them to pay invoices or receive information about the child’s care. There are no simple answers on how to work around the authority set out in state law, but hopefully parents can talk with their children and find ways to be open about care needs and help early to avoid unexpected shocks.

Many of the legal issues above can be addressed in advance with an estate plan. Others are issues that we spotlight in hopes that people are more prepared for things that come up. Our goals at Salish Elder Law are to help people avoid unexpected surprises and prepare in advance for the legal issues that can come up – expectedly.

Salish Elder Law
425-492-7212