photo credit: Shutterstock
July, 2023
I enjoy the musty funk of summer, but fall is still my favorite season. It’s the promise of cooler weather, red and yellow speckled trees, and squirrels digging their teeth into pumpkins left on my porch. Most importantly, fall always meant that school was starting again, and I am that mom in the Staples commercial dancing through the aisles as I buy back-to-school supplies, gleeful at the approaching idea of school.
But this fall is different because my oldest child is going off to college.
We are preparing for this big life transition. We bought a mini fridge, twin XL bed sheets, a mattress pad, and a winter coat. We spent too much time discussing if we needed the flat, long under-the-bed storage bin versus the thin and tall three-tiered shelf. And yes, we’ve been to Staples to pick out three-ring binders.
Most college kids are over eighteen and legal adults in all fifty states. Therefore, as a parent, you no longer have jurisdiction over their care. This means that if something happened to your child and they couldn’t speak for themselves or are incapacitated, you would have no access to their health care providers and have no say in their medical care. It sounds ridiculous, but the law sees an eighteen-year-old as a legal, autonomous adult. So, between picking out laundry bags and shower caddies, I’m also completing health care proxy forms, which designates you (or another adult) as the person who can make health care decisions for your child if they cannot.
I found my state’s health care proxy form on their state website. We also got a health care proxy form from her university health services office, which is in a different state. It costs nothing. Some health care proxy documents require a notary, but our health care proxy documents only required her signature, my signature, and two witnesses. It was easy and took us about ten minutes.
Good luck to all those parents and children starting college this fall. Take a deep breath.
For more information, check out The National Institutes of Health: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/choosing-health-care-proxy