Parental Consent for Minors

Parental Consent for Minors


At EverCare Clinic, Lisa, the clinic’s digital administrator, is tasked with setting up an online healthcare consent form using Zoho Forms. The clinic has a strict policy: anyone under the age of 18 must have parental or guardian consent to submit a form.
One day, while reviewing form submissions, Lisa notices that some minors had submitted forms without parental approval. She needs to fix this quickly and elegantly without adding a complicated setup.

Lisa remembers that Zoho Forms has a feature called Deny Submissions that can automatically block a form from being submitted if certain conditions aren’t met. Perfect.

Lisa’s Goal: Stop form submissions if the person is under 18 and hasn’t checked the consent box.

How Lisa solved it (and how you can too):

Step 1: Build the Form  

Lisa opens Zoho Forms and adds the basic data collection fields such as name, email, phone, and gender. She then adds:
  1. An Age Number field (mark it as mandatory under Form Properties).
  1. A checkbox field for adults above the age of 18 stating 'I am consenting to the usage of my PHI for diagnostic and insurance purposes' and a respective signature field.
  1. A parental/guardian consent checkbox field labelled 'I am a minor and I have parental/guardian consent to submit this form' and a parent/guardian signature field.

Step 2: Set up Field Rules  

She sets up field rules in the Rules tab of the builder, so that:
  1. The minor consent checkbox and parent’s signature field appear when the age is below 18
  1. The adult consent checkbox and signature field appear when the age is 18 or older




Step 3: Set up Deny Submission Rules  

Lisa clicks on Rules → Deny Submissions and adds a new rule like this:

Condition:
If Age is less than 18
And
Parental consent is not selected

Then:
1. Deny submission
2. Show message: 'You must be 18 or have parental consent to submit this form.'


Step 4: Test the form  

Lisa tests her form:
  1. A 17-year-old with no consent? ❌ Submission denied.
  1. A 17-year-old with consent? ✅ Allowed.
  1. An 18-year-old? ✅ Allowed.

Nexacorp Pitstop TicketThe image contains a form titled 'Nexacorp Pitstop Ticket'

Flawless.
Lisa saves the new form settings. Now, EverCare Clinic can safely collect healthcare form submissions without worrying about underage users bypassing parental consent.