When my son turned 18 years old...

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. My name is Robert Mansour. A little while ago my son turned 18 years old. Believe it or not, he's an adult. Technically speaking, legally speaking, he's an adult. I don't think he's an adult, but you know what I'm talking about.

What I had him do was I prepared a health care directive for him and a durable power of attorney. Because he is an adult, if anything happens to him, my wife and I do not have automatic access to his medical records. We do not have automatic access to his college records and his grades and all of the other things that we might need to help him with. What if we needed to handle some of his financial affairs or we needed to make health care decisions for him and he cannot? Because he is an adult, we can't act like his parents any more and just make decisions for him. We're not technically his parental guardians any more. He is an adult.

What I had him do was prepare a durable power of attorney, where he allows my wife and I, his mother and I, to have the authority to help him with financial matters. We also signed a health care directive so that we can have the authority to handle health care matters for him if he cannot. When you turn 18 years of age, it is very important to consider, at the very least, a durable power of attorney, an advance health care directive.

Those 2 things and you name the people that you love and trust, perhaps your parents, one or both of them or whatever you want to do. Remember because you're 18, you're technically an adult and people do not have the legal authority to do things on your behalf unless you give it to them. Once again, 18 years old, durable power of attorney, advance health care directive. If you have any questions about this, please visit my website at mansourlaw.com for much more information. Thank you very much.