What if Your College Kid is Sick or Has an Emergency?

If your kids need help, these are the healthcare documents you may need

Sending kids off to school in the fall has always been an important ritual that marks the changing seasons. It’s an exciting time for kids: A time for learning, social development and a growing independence. Parents are just glad to get back into familiar routines.

Nothing’s normal anymore: Be prepared with health care documents

Anxiety over COVID is forcing new conversations as kids return to college campuses this fall. At 18 or more, these students are officially adults, but they still depend on their parents for food and shelter. Parents declare them on their taxes and pay for their health care. While these kids may be testing their independence, they remain closely tied to their families.

It may seem morbid to talk about health care documents for robust young people, but accidents and illnesses happen to young adults. COVID infects every demographic, and young people are vulnerable too. Nothing is normal anymore. If your kids are away at college and something happens to them, you want to be the one making decisions for them.

 

If there’s a medical emergency with your child, these three forms will help you come to the aid of your child.

 

1. Advance Healthcare Directive

Also referred to as a Healthcare Agent or Medical Power of Attorney, a Healthcare Power of Attorney. By signing this document, you are appointing someone to act on your behalf to make medical decisions if you become incapacitated. Your agent will have access to your medical records and your permission to talk with your health care providers. In this case, your son or daughter would sign this document, giving you, as a parent, permission to act in your behalf. At California Document Preparers, we include an Advance Healthcare Directive in our Living Trust package, along with our Power of Attorney.

 

2. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) authorization (also called a HIPAA release)

This is a more narrow document that permits healthcare providers to disclose your health information to anyone you specify. A standalone HIPAA authorization (meaning that it is not incorporated into a broader legal document like an Advance Healthcare Directive) does not have to be notarized or witnessed; however we include Notary on our form.

This document alone will often suffice for you to get information from the health care institution treating your child. In a HIPAA authorization, young adults can stipulate that they don’t want to disclose information about sex, drugs, mental health or other details that they prefer to keep private. As with the broader Advance Healthcare Directive, a HIPAA release can also be included in a Living Trust, but it is always included as a standalone document in our estate planning package to conform with particular California rules and so that your agent doesn’t have to share your Trust document just to get health care information.

3. Power of Attorney 

A Power of Attorney enables a designated agent (in this case a parent) to make financial decisions on the student’s behalf. The POA can begin immediately after signing the document or only if your child becomes incapacitated. As the designated Power of Attorney, the agent can sign tax returns, access bank accounts, pay bills, make changes to a child’s financial aid package or figure out tuition problems.

Fortunately, most families will never need these forms, but it’s always a better idea to be prepared in case you do.

What else changes at 18?

As teenagers turn 18, they’re adults according to the law. They can now vote, serve in the military and on a jury, sign a contract and get married without parental consent. They still can’t legally drink alcohol and car rental companies usually will not allow them to rent cars, but their legal status is decidedly different than it was at 17. All males with U.S. citizenship must register for the selective service upon reaching the age of 18.

 

COVID has created urgency on so many levels

As the COVID crisis drags on, many more of our clients are scheduling appointments to create or update their Living Trusts. Our Trust package includes a Pour Over Will, and for those families with children under 18, it means that they can name a Guardian rather than having the court appoint one for them. Creating a Trust helps provide some peace of mind during these uncertain times. Best of all, we guide you through it and we prepare the legal documents.

Our Trust package includes a Will, Power of Attorney, an Advance Healthcare Directive and Incapacity Planning. At California Document Preparers, for most of our services, we charge one flat fee. We’re helpful, compassionate and affordable.

We service the entire East Bay and North Bay areas

Berkeley, El Cerrito, Richmond, Pinole, Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley Newark, San Lorenzo, Concord, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore, Tracy and Fremont. Our clients also live in the Napa Valley, Benicia, Vallejo, Martinez, Fairfield.

COVID Heroes: Feeding Workers, Putting Restaurants Back to Work

We’re six months into this miserable disease and there’s little to feel good about. Yet stories emerge of truly heroic people who are manning soup kitchens, putting in 14-hour days in healthcare facilities and fueling supply chains to help save lives. Now independent groups have come together as “Frontline Foods”. An estimated 1,000 volunteers have delivered more than 541,000 meals.

“It’s been an incredible experience,” said Alexis Perlmutter, one of the Frontline Foods volunteers leading Chicago’s efforts. “This would not be possible without an army of volunteers that is rolling up their sleeves to solve problems together.”

Frontline Foods works with World Central Kitchen, a global nonprofit, delivering fresh meals to essential workers

Bringing meals to hospitals in a safe and organized fashion can be extremely difficult, said Nate Mook, the chief executive of World Central Kitchen. But World Central Kitchen has the expertise to help. Having served communities ravaged by disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes, it has stepped in to coordinate these separate fundraising initiatives.

• World Central Kitchen has served more than a million meals in more than 95 cities across the country.
• It has also been working in seven cities in Spain, which had one of the world’s highest coronavirus mortality rates.
• In one week, the Chicago’s Frontline Foods teamed up with 10 restaurants and delivered more than 1,000 meals to six hospitals.
• In New York, World Central Kitchen set up a distribution site at Hudson Yards to serve the staff at the makeshift hospital in the Jacob K. Javits Center. The organization is also planning to bring daily meals to roughly 30,000 professionals working in the city’s public hospitals and health clinics, with support from Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.
• In Washington DC, World Central Kitchen staffers cooked 8,000 meals/day for homeless people, older residents and essential workers, including firefighters and police officers.

World Central Kitchen: Helping restaurants whose businesses have slowed or closed

We all have our favorite neighborhood bars and restaurants, many of them now shuttered. Those lucky enough to have outdoor seating have reopened, but we know they’re limping along. We wonder how long they can hang on, what our neighborhoods will look like when this is all over. Happily, World Central Kitchen is extending a hand.

World Central Kitchen is providing administrative and financial backing to Frontline Foods and other grassroots groups, like Off Their Plate, which has operations from Boston to Seattle. “We’re good at moving quickly,” said Tim Kilcoyne, the director of chef operations at World Central Kitchen. Yet given how widespread the current health crisis is, he said, “the only way we would be able to help as many people as possible is with partners.”

Other collaborations are underway in Oakland

• World Central Kitchen has delivered thousands of meals from dozens of local restaurants to medics at drive-through testing sites, homeless residents in transitional housing, seniors and at-risk youth.
• Kingston 11, a Jamaican restaurant that has been contributing to those relief efforts, has hired back more than half of its back-of-house staff, said Sam Chapple-Sokol, who works for World Central Kitchen in Oakland. “They’re open three days a week right now, because of the limited demand and the limited ability,” he said.
• World Central Kitchen has also been creating opportunities for food delivery workers. It has connected with Uber Eats and other delivery companies to bring meals from local restaurants to front-line workers and others in need in Los Angeles, Newark and New York, as well as Washington and Oakland.

If someone is hungry, you start cooking

The motivation behind the organization’s work comes from the can-do attitude of its founder, the celebrity chef and activist José Andrés, said Mr. Chapple-Sokol. “If somebody is hungry,” he said, “you just get in the kitchen and start cooking.”

COVID has created an urgency on many levels, including creating a Living Trust

As the COVID crisis drags on, more clients are scheduling appointments to create or update their Living Trusts. Our Trust package includes a Pour Over Will, and for those families with children under 18, it means that they can name a Guardianrather than having the court appoint one for you. Creating a Trust helps provide some peace of mind during these uncertain times. Best of all, we guide you through it and we prepare the legal documents.

Our Trust package includes a Will, Power of Attorney, an Advance Healthcare Directive and Incapacity Planning. At California Document Preparers, for most of our services, we charge one flat fee. We’re helpful, compassionate and affordable.

We service the entire East Bay and North Bay areas

Berkeley, El Cerrito, Richmond, Pinole, Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley Newark, San Lorenzo, Concord, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore, Tracy and Fremont. Our clients also live in the Napa Valley, Benicia, Vallejo, Martinez, Fairfield.

John Lewis’ Long Goodbye: The Final Journey

 

Like many Americans, I’ve been profoundly moved by John Lewis’ long goodbye. He represented his community in Congress for 33 years and never ceased his pursuit of equality. He believed that ordinary people with extraordinary vision “can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble.”

His story is a retrospective of the civil rights movement

You can’t really tell Lewis’ story without its broader context–the brave men and women of the civil rights movement who fought and died for the right to ride busses or to sit down and eat at lunch counters. There was Dr. King, of course, but there were others. Ambassador Andrew Young, Hosea Williams, Reverend C.T. Vivian, Stokely Carmichael, Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson—there was a common brotherhood and always a strong faith that united them.

Lewis was 15 when he heard Martin Luther King Jr., and it changed the course of his life

Lewis was inspired by Dr. King’s talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence, that each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. In 1960, the lunch counter sit-ins began; they were fighting for the right to sit down and order an inexpensive meal. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), led by Stokely Carmichael, encouraged students to get involved in the civil rights movement. The Freedom Summer of 1964 was a crusade to register Black voters in Mississippi. Lewis was arrested 45 times during more than half a century fighting for civil rights. He was beaten unconscious in 1965 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he and 600 peaceful protesters marched toward the batons of Alabama State Troopers.

Education became an important stepping stone

The son of sharecroppers, Lewis knew that there was more to life than picking other people’s cotton. He understood the importance of education, and received a BA in Religion and Philosophy from Fisk University, and he is a graduate of the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville. He has been awarded more than 50 honorary degrees from prestigious colleges and universities throughout the United States, including Harvard. In 2010 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama.

At his funeral, three former Presidents and the Speaker of the House eloquently shared personal, emotional experiences of working with Lewis. President Clinton believed that Lewis had survived so many close calls “because he was here on a mission that was bigger than personal ambition.”

A capacity for great courage

John Lewis would have been delighted that a former president, a Black man, had delivered a eulogy that received a standing ovation. “He believed that in all of us, there exists the capacity for great courage,” Obama said, “that in all of us there is a longing to do what’s right, that in all of us there is a willingness to love all people, and to extend to them their God-given rights to dignity and respect.”

Now it is your turn to let freedom ring

After reading John Lewis final letter, it may be that we look back on Lewis’ lifelong activism as a bridge between the civil rights movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s and the global consciousness-raising that is today’s Black Lives Matter movement. “That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.”

COVID has created a new urgency about creating a Living Trust

As the COVID crisis drags on, more clients are scheduling appointments to create or update their Living Trusts. Our Trust package includes a Pour Over Will, and for those families with children under 18, it means that they can name a Guardianrather than having the court appoint one for you. Creating a Trust helps provide some peace of mind during these uncertain times. Best of all, we guide you through it and we prepare the legal documents.

Our Trust package includes a Will, Power of Attorney, an Advance Healthcare Directive and Incapacity Planning. At California Document Preparers, for most of our services, we charge one flat fee. We’re helpful, compassionate and affordable.

We service the entire East Bay and North Bay areas

Berkeley, El Cerrito, Richmond, Pinole, Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley Newark, San Lorenzo, Concord, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore, Tracy and Fremont. Our clients also live in the Napa Valley, Benicia, Vallejo, Martinez, Fairfield.

Worried About Age Discrimination? Are You Kidding? It’s Thriving!

Sally Clark is 62 and unemployable. She’s savvy, high-energy and at the top of her game, an expert in branding. She would love to be working but can’t find a job. “I worked in corporate America for more than 40 years with big-name companies. But I cannot get a job–the same job I rocked 15 years ago. I can’t even get an interview. Nobody takes me seriously at my age–even at the job where I excelled.”

It’s a scary job market for those 50+ and it’s not getting any better

About 35% of the U.S. population is now 50 or older. And age discrimination remains a significant and costly problem for workers, their families and the economy. COVID’s tanking economy means furloughs and downsizing will have an even greater impact on an aging workforce.

Ivanka Trump just offered a suggestion to the millions of people who have been laid off or furloughed over the last few months due to COVID to just “try something new”. Well, Ivanka, finding something new for an older worker is going to be a whole lot harder in a climate where the unemployment rate is somewhere around 14% and growing. As businesses ramp back up, they’ll be looking for ways to streamline their operations and cut costs. That translates to an increase in contractors and younger employees who command lower salaries.

According to an AARP survey:

• Nearly 1 in 4 workers aged 45 and older has been subjected to negative comments about age.
• About 3 in 5 older workers have seen or experienced age discrimination in the workplace.
• 76% of these older workers see age discrimination as a hurdle to finding a new job; half of these older workers are prematurely pushed out of longtime jobs; 90% never earn as much again.

Victoria Lipnic, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) acting chair compared age discrimination to harassment: “Everyone knows it happens every day to workers in all kinds of jobs, but few speak up. It’s an open secret.”

Age discrimination has a long-term economic impact

Nearly 30% of households headed by someone 55 or older don’t have retirement savings or a pension–they’ll have to continue working or rely on Social Security to survive. Yet workers at age 50 are highly skilled, at the top of their games and earning power. These should be important income generation years. But if someone is laid off and can’t find comparable well-paying positions, what remains open are unskilled, minimum-wage jobs.

As employers replace high-priced older workers with fresh, younger workers who are willing to work at significantly lower salaries they’re leaving a lot of intellectual capital on the table.

The socioeconomic consequences

Older people who don’t feel useful are three times more likely to develop a disability, four times more likely to die prematurely than their counterparts who are engaged in meaningful activity. If 30+ years of experience are suddenly discounted as irrelevant, the effect on your health and longevity take a toll.

Ageism: An accepted bias

The AARP Bulletin examined ageism in the workplace to determine why it is so prevalent and what can be done about it.

“Age discrimination is so pervasive that people don’t even recognize it’s illegal,” asserts Kristin Alden, an attorney specializing in employee rights at the Alden Law Group in Washington, D.C.  In the workplace, we found illegal age discrimination in:

• Recruitment and hiring, when younger applicants are shown favor simply because of their age.
• On-the-job bias, when older workers receive fewer training opportunities, promotions and rewards, or are harassed.

Ageism is the result of a culture obsessed with anti-aging everything

One big reason ageism remains an issue is our youth-obsessed culture that spent an estimated $53 billion on antiaging goods and services in 2019 alone. No wonder our resistance to growing old is shared by the companies that employ us.

Rising technologies that didn’t even exist until many older people were already well into their careers has led to hiring biases in which many organizations assume that younger workers will be more tech savvy. This is often not the case.

Not a lot to be gained from winning an age discrimination suit

Even if you win an age discrimination suit against an employer — and even if you prove the discrimination was intentional — the most you can be awarded is twice your lost back pay plus attorney fees if you prevail. Nothing for pain and suffering.

Over the years, it has become increasingly hard to prove that there was willful intent to discriminate based on age. An example might be a company deciding to lay off all its vice presidents. Nothing wrong with that, except that VPs are generally older workers.

A class action suit against PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm

The plaintiff, Steve Rabin, then 50, was rebuffed in his effort to obtain an associate position at PwC. He had an MBA and more than ten years of experience in accounting services. The complaint asserts that a PwC manager asked Rabin whether he’d be able to “fit in” with younger employees and made other somewhat derogatory age-related comments. More than 3,000 other plaintiffs have joined Rabin in a class action suit against PwC. The company, of course, denies wrongdoing.

Job ads address the age issue with descriptors that discourage older workers

HR departments know this is a problem. The average HR person would say, “Oh, yeah, that’s definitely a problem; it needs to be addressed.” They may try to avoid it entirely by creating job ads that use descriptions like “fast-paced environment, young and energetic, technology ninja’ or ‘We work hard and party harder.” These descriptions are code to older workers, telling them that they likely will not fit in.

Tech companies among the biggest age discriminators

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously declared in 2007 that “young people are just smarter,” Silicon Valley is the poster child for the hip, hot youth culture. According to a 2016 report by Statista, the average median employee age at 17 top tech companies was 32, compared with 42 for the total U.S. workforce. A 2018 ProPublica investigation alleges that IBM deliberately engineered the dismissal of an estimated 20,000 employees over age 40 in a five-year period.

The EEOC is supposed to be our police force in all this

The EEOC’s job is to enforce federal laws that protect employees or job applicants from all types of workplace discrimination. Its mandate is also one of leadership: It’s charged with initiating investigations when warranted and being the overall champion of worker rights. But when it comes to age discrimination, the EEOC is struggling to keep up and to bear down. An analysis by The Washington Post found that of 205,355 total age discrimination complaints filed with the agency from 2010 to 2017, a stunning 1% resulted in a discrimination finding. While some of these cases may not have been actionable or too difficult to prove, this remains a shockingly low number of cases.

Many of our Living Trust clients are retired or thinking about retiring

Many of these clients are baby boomers, many are still working, and age discrimination is a topic that frequently surfaces. Our Trust package includes a Will, Power of Attorney, an Advance Healthcare Directive and Incapacity Planning. For most of our services, we charge one flat fee. Schedule a virtual or office appointment today. We guide you through it and we prepare the legal documents.

We service the entire East Bay and North Bay areas

Berkeley, El Cerrito, Richmond, Pinole, Alameda, San Leandro, Castro Valley Newark, San Lorenzo, Concord, Alamo, Danville, Lafayette, Orinda, Moraga, Pleasant Hill, Martinez, Pittsburg, Antioch, Brentwood, Oakley, Discovery Bay, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Livermore, Tracy and Fremont. Our clients also live in the Napa Valley, Benicia, Vallejo, Martinez, Fairfield.

This article is based on a story in AARP.