Your 18-year-old is off to school. Legally, they're on their own.
There's a lot on the checklist when a child leaves for post-secondary: residence deposits, textbooks, a mini-fridge, one last family dinner. Here's the item almost nobody thinks about...and it matters more than the mini-fridge.
The day your child turns 18, they become an adult under Alberta law.
That milestone comes with something most families only discover in a stressful moment: you no longer have any automatic legal authority to act for them. Not in a medical emergency. Not with their bank. Not with their school.
It doesn't matter that you're their parent - whether helicopter or not - that you're paying the tuition, or that they still come home to do laundry. In the eyes of the law, an 18-year-old is an independent adult and no one is entitled to make decisions on an adult's behalf without legal authority to do so.
What that looks like in real life
Imagine your daughter is in her first year in Edmonton or Vancouver and is seriously injured in an accident. She's unconscious and can't make her own medical decisions. If she has no Personal Directive in place, there is no document telling the hospital that you're the one she'd want speaking for her. Depending on the decisions that need to be made, your family may face delays - or even need to apply to the court - before anyone has clear authority to act.
Or something less dramatic: your son is on a semester exchange and something goes sideways with his bank account, his student loan, or his landlord back home. He needs someone here to sort it out. Without an Enduring Power of Attorney, the bank won't deal with you, because it's not your account. Privacy rules work the same way at the school: post-secondary institutions generally won't share a student's information with parents without the student's consent, no matter who pays the bills.
None of this is anyone being difficult. It's the system working exactly as designed: adults make their own decisions, and their information is protected.
The gap appears when an adult suddenly can't make their own decisions, or isn't around to handle something and that adult hasn't given anyone the authority to step in.
Two documents close the gap
The good news: this is one of the simplest problems in estate planning to solve. Two documents do the work.
A Personal Directive (PD) covers personal and health care related decisions. Your child names an agent - often a parent - who can make medical and personal care decisions for them if they ever lose the capacity to make those decisions themselves. The PD only takes effect if that event of incapacity happens; until then, the adult remains fully in charge of their own care.
An Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA) covers financial, legal and real estate matters. It lets the adult name someone they trust to handle banking, bills, rents and leases, and other financial affairs - either if they lose capacity, or in some cases when they simply can't act for themselves because they're away, e.g. working or studying abroad.
Together, these two documents mean that if something happens, the people your child trusts can act quickly.
No scrambling, no emergency court applications, no arguing with a bank's privacy department during a crisis.
"Isn't 18 too young for this?"
It's a fair question, and the honest answer is no, because these documents aren't about wealth or age. They're about capacity and authority.
A PD and an EPA matter for anyone old enough that their parents can't automatically act for them, which in Alberta means everyone 18 and up.
A Will is a different conversation but very much a worthwhile conversation. Many 18-year-olds don't yet have assets that make a Will urgent (though some do, and it's worth asking and planning for). But the PD and EPA are the two documents where the gap is real from day one of early adulthood.
There's also a quieter benefit: preparing these documents is often a young adult's first real conversation about responsibility, trust, and what they'd want if something went wrong. It's a surprisingly good rite of passage. Much better than learning about these gaps the hard way.
A small task for move-in season
For most young adults, these are straightforward documents to prepare, and the process is quick. If your family has a student heading off this fall, or an 18-year-old still at home, it's worth crossing this off the list before the semester takes over.
Cairns Law prepares Student Estate Plans for clients across Sherwood Park, Strathcona County, Edmonton, Fort Saskatchewan, and the surrounding areas, on a flat-fee basis with quotes provided up front.
Evening and weekend appointments are available where possible, because we too know what September calendars look like.
Book a consultation and send your student back to school with the paperwork that matters.
This article provides general information about Alberta law and is not legal advice. For advice about your specific situation, please contact us.
