When Jennifer Hughes’ son was in a mountain biking accident last year, she was prepared to go into full “mama bear” mode, overseeing his medical care and insurance details.
But the Chicago-area mom ran into repeated roadblocks — federal privacy laws — that turned an already stressful time into a nightmare.
Her son, Vance Hughes, had recently turned 18, meaning she no longer had unfettered access to his medical records or his health insurance and financial information.
“It really got me thinking, ‘Gosh, what are we going to do if something happens when he’s at college and he needs our support? Will we be able to give it to him legally?’” Jennifer Hughes said. “I know it sounds crazy, but that was a concern.”
Hughes’ fears were quelled by a company with a name that resonated: Mama Bear Legal Forms. For under $100, college-bound kids can sign privacy waivers, granting their parents access to their medical records and educational information, including grades.
Technological advances have increasingly given parents the ability to track their children’s locations and technology usage. Mama Bear taps into a market of parents accustomed to this vigilance who realize their access changes when their kids turn 18 and are subject to medical- and student-privacy laws.
Mama Bear’s website provides a bundle of health and financial power-of-attorney forms, a release waiving the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which prevents parents from accessing their child’s educational records once they turn 18, and a release waiving the student’s federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, medical-privacy rights.
Representatives of the Nebraska-based company did not respond to interview requests.
Mama Bear, which is not a law firm and doesn’t offer legal advice, markets itself as a solution for anxious parents to “feel confident knowing you can support your college-bound child.”
“It’s a small price to pay for peace of mind,” said Ruth Epps, a Littleton mom whose son at the University of Colorado Boulder signed Mama Bear legal forms.
Chatter about Mama Bear’s services pops up every few weeks in CU-related Facebook groups, where parents crowdsource questions about their children’s dorm-room assignments, ask where they can order soup for a sick kid, and find out which classes are best.
Parents on Facebook wrote that their social media feeds were filled with Mama Bear ads and posts wanting to know more from families who have used the services. Others replied that the company’s offerings felt like the answer to a problem they didn’t know they had yet.
It was a problem Hughes knew intimately. The professional blogger at mommyevolution.com said her son’s mountain biking accident opened her eyes to an issue that hadn’t been on her radar.
Vance Hughes is headed to CU Boulder this fall to study psychology — and ski in his downtime.
When his mom approached him about signing the Mama Bear documents to give her access to his health, financial and educational records, he said it was a no-brainer.
He knew the trouble his mom had been through dealing with his insurance after his biking accident and wanted to prevent that headache while allowing his parents more control over his medical decisions should an emergency happen again.
“The biggest thing for me is my mom can still hold my hand and help me through my formative years of becoming an adult as long as I need help in the future,” Vance Hughes said. “I don’t see the harm in it.”
Vance Hughes said he has a great relationship with his mom. He couldn’t imagine her using her new legal access to pry into his life willy-nilly.
“She’ll probably only look if I’m really, really struggling, and that will allow her to be like, ‘What can I do to help you?’” he said.
Jennifer Hughes agreed. Her son knows she wouldn’t misuse her new power, she said, and she knows he would willingly discuss his grades without her having to snoop.
“You think about your kid being an adult, but he’s still your kid, and they may need your assistance,” she said. “It’s not about making sure you keep a thumb on them. It’s that in case of an emergency, you can support them in the best way they need. He’s going to college to be his own person, and this is a great place for him to start learning how to adult.”
‘A one-size-fits-all approach’
Jennifer Hendricks, a CU Boulder law professor and co-director of the Juvenile and Family Law Program, wasn’t as sold on Mama Bear Legal Forms.
It wasn’t so much the medical directive or health care power of attorney that concerned her, although she noted it was more likely a parent would need those forms for themselves than for their children.
What worried Hendricks was what she described as fear-based marketing and a potential overreach in signing away students’ FERPA and HIPAA rights.
These forms go beyond allowing parents to have a say if a medical emergency strikes, she said. They could inform mom and dad that their child is talking to a therapist, taking birth control or going to the health center for a nasty hangover, Hendricks said.
“What I’m seeing is really infantilizing the adult children by having the mom prepare everything and then just say ‘sign this,’” Hendricks said.
Colorado-based family law attorney Rich Harris said he’s had conversations with his own family about whether they should consider some of these legal forms for their college-aged children. He advised talking to legal experts rather than outsourcing to a one-size-fits-all internet option.
“There’s a trend in these do-it-yourself legal form companies,” Harris said. “I’ve been cautioning people for years to be very, very careful about them because they purport to give you a one-size-fits-all approach for a super low fee and offer very little legal customization.”
Plus, Hendricks said, there are existing, free medical and university release forms allowing students to decide which parts of their lives their parents can access. For example, university FERPA waivers allow parents and kids to sign off on parents having access to their students’ financial information — useful for parents who are paying their kids’ tuition or handling financial aid forms.
“Parents have been trained to have a real sort of dystopian level of surveillance over their children, and this is a company trying to make money off of profiting off that anxiety and the need to monitor and surveil rather than to prepare their child to be an adult,” Hendricks said. “The company is playing on this fear that something terrible could happen and you won’t be able to help your kid.”
‘A gradual roll into adulthood’
Epps, the Littleton mom, felt her fear realized after her son got sick while at CU Boulder. He didn’t know how to advocate for himself when he went to the doctor, she said, and he didn’t say much when she asked how his appointment went. She tried to call the university to learn more, but was told she couldn’t access his medical information.
Epps’ son ended up developing pneumonia and needed to come home to get better, missing about a month of school, she said.
“Now that he has Mama Bear in place, I can talk to anyone,” she said. “Which would hopefully prevent something like that from happening in the future. I would have known had they said his oxygen levels are low that things were bad.”
Yet Epps would not define herself as a “mama bear.” Instead, she said she hails from the “suck it up, buttercup” line of parenting.
However, when she saw Mama Bear all over her social media feeds, she said it felt like the answer to anxieties that ramped up after her son’s sickness.
“I cannot recommend enough that people do it because you will have no authority, and it happens the day they turn 18,” Epps said. “There’s no grace period. There’s no, ‘Oh, let’s help you get used to this.’ It’s 18, and you’re cut off.”
Epps said she doesn’t track her son’s grades, but that it’s a nice feature to have just in case. Plus, she said the whole thing is a good deal because it doesn’t expire until her son revokes it, meaning she doesn’t have to pay some kind of annual fee.
She said she didn’t have much of a conversation with her son about the paperwork.
“I think I just said ‘sign this,’” she said. “I just don’t think they understand, to go from having someone who makes all of your medical appointments for you and manages your prescription drugs to being completely alone — they don’t understand that it’s so sudden. We’re covering his tuition and living expenses, so there’s a gradual roll into adulthood. It’s not like that for this. They’re so strict about privacy laws.”
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