Estate Planning Practice Blog

Your 18 Year Old Daughter on Spring Break?

A question asked by one attorney to another recently:

I have an 18 year old daughter headed to a Spring Break designation with her best friend and her parents. What documents does she need to bring with her to ensure that if something happens, decisions can be made by her friend's parents?

The answer:

If your child is now age 18, your child is now legally an adult and your ability as his or her parent is restricted to terms of making any decisions without permission.

This means that every 18 year old should have a durable power of attorney and advance health care directive documents in place naming their choice of agents (hopefully that would be Mom and Dad) to make financial and medical decisions for them in the event they are unable to do so.

For the Spring Break soirée, the child could also have  a limited duration power of attorney and advance health care directive naming her friend's parents to make decisions for her in the event something happens.

It's hard to imagine, but at age 18, making decisions now fall upon your children alone and your access as their parent is limited including making medical decisions, access or get info about banking, school loans, financial aid, and grades (to name a few examples) without legal permission. Think of it as a reverse permission slip!

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Estate Planning, Probate and Trusts involve complex areas of law. Individual circumstances must be considered before any advice can be given.  The general information above is not to be construed as legal advice, which can only be given after consideration of the unique facts of each matter. Please seek the advice or counsel of your attorney, financial advisor or CPA as it may be appropriate.

Nominating Guardians for Minor Children - The Part You Don't See.

One of the most important things a parent can do is make their nominations for guardians in writing for their minor children in the event something should happen to them.

In California, you can nominate a guardian in a variety of ways with a nomination in a Will being the most common. That being said, our firm recommends that nominations for guardians be included in a Will for most parents.

This is important to remember and we are constantly reminded everyday as we fight contested guardianship battles.

Just yesterday, TLD attorney Monica Goel successfully handled a contested guardianship in our local courts. A mother of a thirteen year old child nominated her very close friends to be her daughter's guardian should something happen to her in her Will. Something did happen and she died.

The close friends filed a petition for temporary guardianship based on the mother's wishes for the minor, which was vigorously contested by the minor child's great-uncle and second cousin. Since the mother's wishes were clear, the court hung its hat on honoring decedent's nomination and wishes.

This is the part that parents don't see because something has happened to them. Don't let this happen to your children.

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Estate Planning, Probate and Trusts involve complex areas of law. Individual circumstances must be considered before any advice can be given.  The general information above is not to be construed as legal advice, which can only be given after consideration of the unique facts of each matter. Please seek the advice or counsel of your attorney, financial advisor or CPA as it may be appropriate.

Wrapping Up a Trust.

While trust administration is largely removed from any court oversight and is managed privately by the successor trustee(s), it is a good idea to formally wrap up a trust (any trust including a revocable living trust) where the settlor(s) (or creators) of the trust have died.

A Trust Distribution Agreement is designed to protect both the successor trustee(s) and beneficiaries of the trust after the settlor(s) has/have died.  This document is a formal agreement prepared by the successor trustee(s) that covers the following aspects of trust administration:

• Distribution Provisions (as understood by the parties and governed by the trust)
• Date of Distribution
• Proposed Distribution
• Funding Dates
• Preliminary Distributions (if any)
• Consent to Distribution by Beneficiaries
• Waiver of Notice (if appropriate)
• Waiver of Accounting (if appropriate)
• Reserve Amounts (if appropriate)

It should also include language for governing law and appropriate indemnification clauses. Once such an agreement is prepared and agreed upon by the parties, the successor trustee(s) can finalize the trust and distribute the trust assets.

Consult with your attorney about trust administration and preparing a Trust Distribution Agreement to wrap up the trust. It is one of those things that will give you a peace of mind when administering a trust as a successor trustee.

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Estate Planning, Probate and Trusts involve complex areas of law. Individual circumstances must be considered before any advice can be given.  The general information above is not to be construed as legal advice, which can only be given after consideration of the unique facts of each matter. Please seek the advice or counsel of your attorney, financial advisor or CPA as it may be appropriate.