Question:
With my own mom, when she went to see the attorney to prepare legal docs, the attorney asked “who do she want as POA?” and mom answered, “my son the banker and my daughter the financial planner.” So the attorney prepared the POA for son AND daughter to be POA jointly, and EVERYTHING required both our signatures.
I advise clients to make the language son OR daughter, because it made things very difficult for us because by the time we needed to use the POA, my brother lived in North Carolina and my mom and I were in Ft. Lauderdale. We were blessed — we got along and there were never any disagreements with any of my siblings about her care. It was the inconvenience of geography. So, unless there is a real reason to make it “AND”, my advice is to make it “OR”, allowing one person to sign when necessary to act as POA.
Response:
You are so right. In addition to using “or” rather than “and,” we also add the words “jointly and severally,” to make it absolutely clear that each agent under a durable power of attorney can act independently. So, the document would read something like this:
I appoint my daughter, Theresa McDonald, and my son, Jack Horner, to act jointly and severally as my attorneys in fact.
It’s often a good idea to appoint to agents under a durable power of attorney so they can share the duties and to make it more likely that at least one will be available when needed. Of course, remember that while each agent is empowered to act independently, they must make decisions together. Independent doesn’t mean freelancing, just being able to move ahead without both agents having to sign every check or other document.
We generally counsel against naming more than two because doing so begins to cause communication difficulties. Instead of just A and B keeping one another in the loop, A has to tell B who has to inform C who has to get in touch with A. It’s also more likely that disagreements can arise.
