Financial and medical power of attorney

Estate Planning · Powers of Attorney

Without them, the alternative is a guardianship.

When someone loses capacity without powers of attorney in place, the family's only route is a court guardianship: an application, a physician's certificate, an attorney appointed for the proposed ward, a hearing, and ongoing court supervision with annual reports. It takes months, it costs thousands, and it is public. Two documents signed in advance avoid nearly all of it.

Statutory durable power of attorney (finances)

• Authorises an agent to handle banking, property, taxes, insurance, benefits and business interests.
• "Durable" means it survives your incapacity — which is the entire point; a non-durable power ends exactly when it is needed.
• Can be effective immediately or spring into effect on a physician's certification of incapacity. Springing powers sound safer and frequently cause delay, because someone must first obtain the certification.
• Certain powers — making gifts, creating or changing survivorship and beneficiary designations, changing rights of survivorship — must be granted expressly rather than assumed.

Medical power of attorney

A separate document appointing an agent to make health care decisions when a physician certifies you cannot. It should name alternates, and it works alongside a HIPAA authorisation, without which a hospital may decline to release the information the agent needs to decide anything. It does not cover end-of-life instructions — that is the directive to physicians.

Getting it accepted

Banks and brokerages refuse powers of attorney more often than people expect: the document is old, the institution wants its own form, or the specific authority is not clearly granted. Texas law limits a third party's ability to refuse an acknowledged statutory power without good cause, and there is a procedure for compelling acceptance. Practically, the answer is a well-drafted document, refreshed periodically, and a call from a lawyer when an institution stalls.

The documents that sit alongside them

A declaration of guardian in advance of need, which nominates who should serve as guardian for you — and for your minor children — if it ever becomes necessary. Instructions on how debts and taxes are to be handled by your agent. Optional funeral and disposition instructions. And the witness signatures and notarisation that make the whole set enforceable rather than merely well-intentioned.

After signing

Store the originals somewhere safe and accessible — not a safe deposit box nobody else can open — and give copies to your agents and to your physician. Review the set after any significant change in your family or your health, and refresh a financial power of attorney periodically, because institutions grow reluctant about very old documents.

Choosing the agent

Choose the person who is organised, available and able to say no to relatives — not automatically the eldest. Naming two people to act jointly sounds fair and creates deadlock. Name a first choice and alternates, tell them where the document is, and give them a copy before they need it.

Common questions