Letter · Wills, Estates, Probate & Succession
HIPAA authorization for estate planning (United States)
An authorization that tracks the core elements and required statements in 45 CFR 164.508, kept as its own document, with psychotherapy notes excluded and state privacy law left open.
- Kind
- Letter. A letter or email you adapt and send.
- Where it applies
- United States
- AI use
- Yellow You and the tool draft together, with you directing. You check every statement you rely on.
- Law stated as at
- 22 October 2026
- Status
- Maintained. Checked on 22 October 2026 against the 2 authorities it cites, for United States.
- Version
- 1
- Source
- Written for this library
When to use it
Use when a covered entity must disclose a client's protected health information for an estate-planning matter. Do not staple it to an engagement letter. Use a separate authorization for psychotherapy notes.
Used for these tasks
- Prepare the will-instructions pack: capacity, undue-influence and family notes
- Build a will-validity issues list: execution, capacity and suspicious circumstances
Each task page says how far AI may help with the task and what the lawyer must review.
How AI may be used
A tool may copy the client's name and the provider's name from the intake into the matching blanks.
AI may
- Insert the client's name, the provider, and the recipient the lawyer has already written
- Leave the description of the information blank until the lawyer writes it in specific words
- Remind the lawyer when the expiration line says "none" on a non-research authorization
AI must not
- Must not combine this authorization with the engagement letter or the intake
- Must not include psychotherapy notes in this document
- Must not decide that a personal representative has authority
- Must not name a state privacy statute that is not in the file
- Must not tell the client the authorization has been accepted by the provider
The lawyer checks
- All six core elements in 45 CFR 164.508(c)(1) are completed
- The three required statements in 164.508(c)(2) are present, in plain language
- The conditioning sentence matches 164.508(b)(4) for this request
- A more stringent state privacy law has been looked up or recorded as still to be looked up
- The client receives a copy of the signed authorization
Method: how the Green, Yellow and Red levels are decided. This is guidance for planning, not legal advice.
Read the full text
The full text is available after you log in. It is free. When you log in you can:
- read the whole precedent, with its drafting notes beside it;
- copy it, or download it as a Word file or Markdown;
- add it to your firm’s knowledge base, so colleagues can find it;
- let the AI tools you connect read it from that knowledge base.
The summary, the law it rests on and the AI-use guidance above stay public. Privacy.
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