Events in the national news at Virginia Tech remind us that life is precious and sometimes cut short in heartbreaking ways. If you have children or grandchildren who are over the age of 18 but not yet established enough in their own lives to consider estate planning, we encourage you to have them execute a Durable General Power of Attorney and an Advance Directive/Health Care Surrogate.

We recommend these legal documents because hospitals and health care providers are now being held to higher standards of patient privacy under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ("HIPAA"). HIPAA imposes strict penalties on health care providers who release an adult patient's information to another person, even the patient's parents. Once a child turns 18, the parents no longer have authority over their child's financial or medical decisions.

Can you imagine how frustrating it must be for health care providers to be prohibited from releasing information to a child's parents? Therefore, we recommend that you have adult children or grandchildren execute Durable General Powers of Attorney and Advance Directives designating their parents as their Attorney-in-fact and their Health Care Surrogate, to make financial decisions and health care decisions should they not be able to do so themselves. Once they are on their own, they can do their own planning, and decide to designate their spouse or another adult. Until then, we feel it is an important responsibility, for you, as a parent or grandparent, to suggest this course of action, and for us, as your advisors, to offer an alternative to a situation which would otherwise require court action if the proper documents were not in place.