This info RE Virginia529 is important to me as well. In addition to opening the 529 for children, you should also be able to open a 529 with yourself as the current beneficiary. My understanding is that you can then change beneficiary down the line as long as this change follows certain rules (new beneficiary needs to be part of the same legally defined family). Am I mistaken?
I refer you to the
Invest 529 Program Description.
Because you're taking a risk in opening a 529 that the beneficiary doesn't use it (they could decide not to attend college, win an athletic, academic, or military scholarship), you're allowed to change the beneficiary once per year.
It appears that you could open a 529 with yourself as the beneficiary. Later, you can change the beneficiary to the child attending college. As long as the beneficiary is in the same family, there should be no tax consequences.
If the funds become Non-Qualifying Distributions, Virginia can recapture the tax deductions claimed at the time of the contribution.
This seems to open a huge loophole. Imagine you get married and you and your spouse decide you want children someday. Each spouse could open 529s for themselves plus another 529 for the other spouse, and take Virginia tax deductions on up to $16,000 of contributions each year. While waiting for the stork to bring you children, you can continue contributing each year, giving your money additional time to grow, tax-free, before the little bundles of joy arrive.
When a child arrives, you can additionally open two 529s (one owned by each spouse) and take Virginia deductions on another $8,000 of contributions each year.
When it's time for a child to attend college, you can just change the beneficiary from yourself or your spouse to the child attending.
Of course, if you over-save on one child, you can encourage them to go to Graduate / Medical / Law school, or have another child or "qualified family member" who then attends college. Qualified family members include children, parents, spouses, siblings, first cousins, nieces & nephews and even aunts & uncles. You start to run into generation-skipping tax and gift tax problems if you change the beneficiary to grandchildren or further descendants.