The young adult estate planning guide

Your kid turns 18 and moves into a dorm in Flagstaff or Tucson. A week later they end up in the emergency room. The hospital won't tell you anything over the phone. Not because anyone is being difficult. Because the law changed the moment your child turned 18, and you are now a stranger to your own child's medical record.

What changes at 18 in Arizona

At 18, your child becomes a legal adult. HIPAA applies to their health records, which means doctors can't share information with you without a signed authorization (45 C.F.R. § 164.502). FERPA applies to their academic records, which means the university can't tell you about grades, a missed class, or a flagged mental health concern without a signed release (20 U.S.C. § 1232g). Banks can't discuss their accounts. Landlords can't negotiate their lease. You know all of this in theory. You forget it in practice, until the first time you need to know something and nobody is allowed to tell you.

The three documents every Arizona 18-year-old should have signed

This is a small, cheap, fast project. Three documents cover almost every scenario parents actually end up in.

A healthcare power of attorney. Your young adult names one or both parents (or another trusted adult) as their agent to make medical decisions if they can't. Without this, you're relying on emergency room staff to loop you in, and the law doesn't require them to. A.R.S. § 36-3221 governs healthcare POAs in Arizona.

A durable financial power of attorney, limited in scope. A full financial POA isn't appropriate for most 18-year-olds. A limited one, valid during incapacity or during specific windows (while studying abroad, for example), lets a parent manage tuition payments, rent, insurance, and bills if the young adult is unable to act (A.R.S. § 14-5506).

A HIPAA authorization. This is the document that lets you speak with their doctors, see their records, and participate in care decisions. Standalone HIPAA authorizations are worth having in addition to the healthcare POA, because the POA only activates on incapacity while the HIPAA form lets you communicate with providers in ordinary situations too.

Parents often assume they're automatically the agent by default. They aren't. Your student picks, and they pick in writing. Most choose both parents or one parent with the other as alternate. Some choose a trusted aunt, an older sibling, or a family friend who works in healthcare. The only rule is that the agent needs to be reachable, willing, and capable of making decisions. If the student is estranged from a parent or has a complicated family situation, that conversation happens before the document is signed.

FERPA: the school has a separate form

FERPA operates on different rules than HIPAA. A power of attorney doesn't unlock academic records. You need a separate FERPA release signed by the student, usually on the university's own form. Most Arizona universities have this form available online under the registrar or dean of students. Print it, sign it, file it before move-in week.

This matters for more than grades. If a professor reports a concerning essay to the dean of students, if a roommate flags a mental health situation to residence life, or if your student misses three weeks of class, the university can't tell you without a FERPA release on file. Parents discover this at the worst possible moment.

Does an 18-year-old need a will?

For most 18-year-olds, no. Arizona intestacy rules (A.R.S. § 14-2103) send an unmarried person's assets to their parents, which is usually what the 18-year-old would have chosen anyway.

A will is worth considering if the young adult has inherited money, owns a vehicle titled solely in their name, or has digital assets (cryptocurrency, a meaningful investment account, a monetized social account) that would be difficult to access or transfer without documentation. The Arizona Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (A.R.S. § 14-13101 et seq.) lets a personal representative access digital accounts, but only if the user provided consent in the right place, usually either in a will or on the platform itself.

If there are assets to speak of, a simple pour-over will and a basic revocable trust start to make sense. For the typical college freshman with a checking account and a laptop, the three documents above are enough.

Timing

Sign these before the move to college, not during the first crisis. The right moment is the summer before freshman year, ideally in the same month as physicals and the dorm contract. The documents take less than an hour to execute with witnesses and a notary. A remote-online notarization session works in Arizona (A.R.S. § 41-371 et seq.), which matters if the student is already away from home when you realize nothing is in place.

If you missed the pre-college window, do it now. Don't wait for a spring break emergency, a study-abroad application, or the senior-year return to the ER that prompted the Google search that landed you here.

How often to update

Review after any life change that would make a different agent the right person to name. A move, especially out of Arizona, because healthcare POAs don't always port cleanly across state lines even when the statute says they should. A serious relationship that would call for different medical or financial contacts. Marriage, which changes almost everything a parent used to handle.

In practice, most of these documents get a revisit at 22, again when the young adult marries, and again when they buy something significant like a car or a home.

What it costs and how to do it

For a basic young-adult package, we charge a small flat fee that includes the healthcare POA, limited financial POA, HIPAA authorization, and a FERPA release template for the specific Arizona university. If the student has assets that call for a simple will, that can be added at a flat rate as well. Sign all four documents in a single sitting, give everyone their own copies, and leave one set in a place both parent and student can access from anywhere.

The whole project, from start to signed, takes about two weeks. Most of that time is scheduling.