A document authorising someone to act on another person's behalf in financial or legal matters.
A power of attorney is a written authorisation for one person, the agent, to act for another, the principal. It can be broad or narrow - some are written for a single transaction - and it is a delegation of authority rather than a transfer of ownership: the principal keeps their property and, while they have capacity, can revoke the document.
The word durable is the one that matters. An ordinary power of attorney ends if the principal loses capacity, which is precisely when it is most needed; a durable power of attorney is written to survive incapacity. A separate document usually covers health care decisions, and a financial power of attorney generally does not extend to them.
A power of attorney ends at death, at which point authority passes to whoever administers the estate. The agent owes duties to the principal and can be held accountable for abusing the authority - misuse by a trusted person is a recognised category of elder financial abuse.
The two recurring problems are documents that turn out not to be durable, and documents that banks or title companies decline to accept because they lack a formality or specific authority the state requires. Both are cheap to prevent at drafting and difficult to fix once capacity is lost.
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