A class of diffusion driven Free Boundary Problems is considered which is
characterized by the initial onset of a phase and by an explicit kinematic
condition for the evolution of the free boundary. By a domain fixing change of
variables it naturally leads to coupled systems comprised of a singular
parabolic initial boundary value problem and a Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Even
though the one dimensional case has been thoroughly investigated, results as
basic as well-posedness and regularity have so far not been obtained for its
higher dimensional counterpart. In this paper a recently developed regularity
theory for abstract singular parabolic Cauchy problems is utilized to obtain
the first well-posedness results for the Free Boundary Problems under
consideration. The derivation of elliptic regularity results for the underlying
static singular problems will play an important role