Protect Your family

In Illinois, a person is considered an adult at the age of 18 with adult rights,

responsibilities and consequences. For example:

• Educational decisions – School Administrators will tell the parents that the student now makes all decisions about their education. The school cannot prevent a student from walking away from their program.
• Healthcare decisions – Medical providers will tell parents that they no longer have access to their child’s medical records. A doctor will look to the child to decide what course of treatment they want, not to the parents.
• Encounters with the police – Eighteen year olds are treated as adults by the police.The police will be disinclined to permit parents to intervene to protect their child’s due process rights if it is not evident that the child has a disability.
• For more information on why your 18 year needs a guardian, contact  our office.

An aging person is presumed to be able to make informed, correct decisions about their finances and healthcare. Most older adults sign Powers of Attorney for Healthcare and Property while they are competent. If there are no Powers of Attorney in place, family members need to consider asking the court to appoint a guardian if they see:

• Declining health and wellness - Failure to make and keep doctors appointments, medications not renewed, weight loss, growing is no longer important. Guardianship of the person will give the family the authority to step in and get the person back on track.
• Finances in disarray - Piles of unopened mail, many packages arriving at the persons door, new acquaintances taking advantages of friendship.
• Neighbors or friends or healthcare workers expressing concern even if the immediate family does not recognize a problem.
• For information on how to initiate a guardianship, please contact our office.

There are many life changing milestones in our life that will make an estate plan necessary. Eighteen is the first changing milestone because the law declares that a person to be an adult. An estate plan can begin very simple at 18 and expand as responsibilities grow. For example:

• Becoming eighteen - Power of attorney for health care - designate a parent or other trusted person as an agent for health decisions because if they are injured and taken to a hospital, there is no time to waste deterring who can make medical decisions for the injured person.
• Working or going to college – Power of attorney for property – designate a parent or other trusted adult who can make financial transactions on their behalf, if the need arises, such paying bills, speaking with student aid institutions and creditors.
• A single adult at any time of life – prepare a Will or other use other estate planning techniques to designate and outline the distribution of money and property. If there is no Will or other documents, the state will determine who gets your assets under the then current laws of descent and distribution.
• Marriage – prepare an estate plan in order to structure how assets will be distributed if one or both spouses died suddenly.
• Children – prepare an estate plan to provide for the children’s future and nominate guardians while they are minors or disabled, in the event of the parents’ death.