1. Yes, you should have an attorney.

We might be biased on this one, but families agree that having an experienced Bucks County Estate planning attorney by their side makes the process easier and much more thorough. If you or a loved one is considering hiring an estate planning attorney, interviewing and reviewing the credentials of several local attorneys will help begin a working relationship. Maintaining a relationship with your estate planning lawyer is important for not just the creation of the estate, but the maintenance and administration phase with heirs or beneficiaries. Ensuring the experience and rapport are there make the process much more productive. (more…)

All too often, families find their lives in upheaval after a medical emergency strikes a loved one. We hope it never happens so we try to take the appropriate measures – draft a will, compile estate documents, and execute a power of attorney. But sometimes, even those documents aren’t enough when presented to a third party, such as a bank. Requiring more signatures, re-signing and re-notarizing, banks often make a bad time worse when it comes to honoring legal documents. Fortunately, recent changes to Act 95 update the financial power of attorney law in Pennsylvania making it easier for families.

A financial power of attorney is created to provide someone else the authority to access banking capabilities on behalf of an individual. This is considered the principal-agent relationship, with the principal being the owner of the accounts and agent being the trusted individual to act on the owner’s behalf.

Many families do not have a power of attorney until they need one, when a loved one is no longer able to maintain their financial responsibilities due to injury or old age. However, many families have found themselves turned away by banks – they are told their POA does not meet their requirements. That kind of delay and stress is certainly not what anyone wants to deal with when a family member is going through a difficult time.

Hence the recent changes to the financial power of attorney laws. The changes to Act 95 required the addition of specific verbiage within the “Notice” page. The notice must clearly state that the agent must act in accordance with the principal’s reasonable expectations to the extent actually known by the agent and otherwise in the principal’s best interest. Pursuant to section 5601(c), the document must also state that the agent must act in good faith and act only within the scope of authority granted in the POA.

Other changes pertain to the execution of the document. The financial power of attorney must be signed by two witnesses that are not mentioned elsewhere in the POA document; the document must then be notarized.

For banks, liability has always been the concern and source of rejection headaches for families. Fearful of bad POAs that land them in hot water, banks have had to apply their own set of criteria outside the state requirements. Now, banks are held to the fact that they do not have any liability for accepting a “bad” POA (forged signature, etc.) if they accepted it in good faith. The liability actually falls on banks for not accepting a valid POA.

Whether you have or do not yet have a financial power of attorney, an experienced estate planning attorney should review your documents – revisiting pursuant to the changes and updating any out of date information. Has your choice of agent changed? Did you get divorced? There are many questions to consider when thinking about a POA, all of which could become very important later in life. Call our office to discuss financial power of attorneys with a Doylestown estate lawyer, (215) 486-8171.