Faqs About A Power Of Attorney
Posted on: 22 February 2016
Part of estate planning is designating someone to make decisions regarding your health and finances in the event that you are incapacitated. To avoid any challenges to your power of attorney, it is important that you cover as many situations as possible. If you are in the process of creating your power of attorney, here is what you need to know.
Can You Designate Only One Child to Handle Your Affairs?
If you have more than one child, the question of who should be allowed to represent you in dealing with financial and medical affairs can be difficult. You can choose to designate one adult child as a representative or list them all. Each decision has drawbacks to consider.
When you elect to name more than one adult child to represent you, everyone chosen has to agree on all decisions made. If one child does not, your children could end up in court arguing over how to settle your affairs.
If you name just one adult child as a representative, the other children could feel left out. The child listed could also refuse to take into consideration what the other children think should happen with your affairs. Although your representative is not legally obligated to factor in their desires when making decisions for you, failing to do so could be damaging to their relationship.
To keep the peace, you can choose to name one child to be the financial representative and the other child could serve as the medical representative. Any remaining children could serve as alternates that would take over in the event that one of the representatives was unable to serve.
Does Divorce Change Your Power of Attorney?
If your ex is listed as your representative on your power of attorney, divorce does not automatically end his or her obligation. Depending on the state in which you live, his or her rights to represent you will continue despite the divorce.
Unless you want to leave your ex as the representative, you need to revoke the power of attorney. Your attorney needs to create a new power of attorney and ensure that it is filed with the court with your divorce decree.
There are many other aspects of creating and maintaining a power of attorney that you should consider. Talk to your estate planning attorney about what you need to know in your specific situation so that you can take moves to ensure that your affairs are handled in case you are unable to do so yourself. Contact a business, such as Great Plains Diversified Services Inc, for more information.
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