Of 2 Durable Power Of Attorney: Form To Grant: Fill & Download for Free

The POA recipient should use reasonable care to confirm a POA is valid, to prevent fraud and to protect a principal from financial abuse.Under Colorado law, CRS 15-14-719, Acceptance of and reliance upon acknowledged (notarized) power of attorney:(4) A person that is asked to accept a power of attorney, acknowledged before a notary public, may request and rely upon, without further investigation, an agent's certification under penalty of perjury of any factual matter concerning the principal, agent, or power of attorney.CRS 15-14-720. Liability for refusal to accept acknowledged power of attorney (abridged)(1) Except as otherwise provided in subsection (2) of this section:(a) A person shall either accept an acknowledged power of attorney or request a certification no later than seven business days after presentation of the power of attorney for acceptance.(b) If a person requests a certification, the person shall accept the power of attorney no later than five business days after receipt of the certification.(c) A person may not require an additional or different form of power of attorney for authority granted in the power of attorney presented.(2) A person is not required to accept an acknowledged power of attorney if:(e) The person in good faith believes that the power is not valid or that the agent does not have the authority to perform the act requested.(f) The person makes, or knows that another person has made, a report to a governmental agency that the principal may be subject to physical or financial abuse, neglect, exploitation, or abandonment by the agent.(f.5) The person has an apprehension that the agent is acting unlawfully or not in good faith and the person is investigating to determine that the principal may be subject to financial abuse, neglect, exploitation, or abandonment by the agent.Laws vary by state. Read and follow your state laws for power of attorney.Contact an attorney for legal advice.Disclaimer: I am not an attorney and this information is not legal advice.

In California, it takes at least two:A durable power of attorney for health care. This specifies what decisions your agent can make for you, and really only takes effect if you are unable to decide for yourself: if you are unconscious, or unable to understand what’s going on, or become senile (Alzheimers or other forms of dementia).A general power of attorney. This gives your attorney-in-fact (the person named in the document) the ability to manage your investments, your bank accounts, your real estate (e.g., house) etc.Note that either one can be revoked by the principal (the person granting the power) at any time. If you want to make it irrevocable, you need to create a trust. Then you can put your assets into the trust and leave everything up to the trustee(s) that you named. But a PoA for Health Care is always revocable as long as you are conscious and able to understand what’s going on. It’s your body. How could it be otherwise?

If the question is about how title is transferred upon death, well, voluntariness has nothing to do with it. The property passes according to law, as dead persons cannot own property. (Their estates can, temporarily, but the decedent themself is not really part of the equation at that point.) So once the person is dead, the rights to their property, including financial accounts, will be in someone else. As for who will end up with those rights, “Trusts and Estates” is an entire class in law school. (This answer will necessarily be confined to generalities, and to American law.)There are several things that can happen to property upon the death of the owner.A property interest may be “with right of survivorship.” If the property is held “by the entirety” (this device is only available to married couples), the entire interest in the property will pass to the spouse with no further ado. The spouses each have an inchoate, joint, interest in the property so long as they are both alive, and the consent of each of them is required to alienate it. Likewise, if the property is held “jointly, with right of survivorship” with anyone, the decedent’s interest in the property will pass to the designated survivor(s) with no further ado. Joint tenancy, in the specific context of bank accounts, normally provides any of the co-tenants with the immediate use of any and all funds in the account, subject to a theoretical right of accountingA “contingent” interest in property may be payable to someone on the death of the decedent as a matter of either contract law (such as a life insurance policy) or by a deed so specifying (often a deed reserving a “life estate” in real property to the decedent with the “remainder” to a beneficiary). Pension annuities are also usually structured like this. The occurrence of the specified event (the death) creates the property interest in the beneficiary. The strength of the beneficiary’s future interest varies by how the arrangement was created in the first place.Property that is owned by the decedent outright that is neither subject to a contingent interest on death (i.e. it is “in fee simple”) nor to a type of cotenancy that implies survivorship (it’s possible to hold a partial interest in property that is not a joint tenancy with right of survivorship) will pass to the decedent’s estate upon death. This also includes choses in action (inchoate rights that must be sued for), intangible property, or contractual rights to the extent that no designation of a contingent beneficiary is made.Once an estate is created, it needs to be disposed of, or transferred to other non-deceased persons, as is provided by law. If the decedent has left a will, the local jurisdiction’s laws relating to wills will control the effect of any devise made in the will, but typically a validly made and executed will is controlling as written. If there is no will, the state will have a statute providing for an ‘intestacy’ scheme. Normally this distributes the decedent’s property, in descending order of priority, to (1) creditors, (2) estate taxes, (3) any surviving spouse, (4) children of the decedent, (5) parents, siblings, or other relations of the decedent, (6) the state itself, if no persons meeting the other criteria can be found. The exact provisions vary widely from state to state.Someone needs to be appointed to administer the estate, or take charge of the property and accomplish distribution to creditors, heirs, or beneficiaries. If such a person is nominated in the will, they will be called executor, or, sometimes the feminine, ‘executrix,’ may be used. If no executor is nominated, or if the executor duly nominated is unavailable or unwilling to serve, someone else, called an ‘administrator c.t.a. (cum testamento annexo)’ will be appointed. An administrator of an intestate’s estate will be appointed by the court on application of any interested party. Most administrators are spouses or children of the decedents, although they do not have to be; occasionally if a small estate is significantly burdened by a lien or other significant claim by a creditor, the creditor’s lawyer or other agent will be named administrator.Either an executor/-trix or an administrator/-trix is called more generically a ‘personal representative,’ and upon appointment has most of the same powers over the estate’s property that the decedent would have had if still alive. So I believe this is the first answer to your question—the person who is put in charge of the estate would take care of the ‘financial accounts’ if they were not joint to begin with. The personal representative, however, is bound by the terms of the will or the intestacy statute and any disposition must be consistent with those provisions.Now perhaps the question was how can this all be avoided. This, too, is a fairly substantial area of law not easily summarised into a thousand-word answer on Quora, but there are several ways of doing this, all of which involve an ‘inter vivos’ (amongst the living) transfer by the original owner before their death. Such a transfer must be voluntary, or authorised by a durable power of attorney or a guardian of the estate.Property can be split into life estate and remainder, or put into some form of joint tenancy, so that it will pass automatically. The knowing assent of the original fee owner is always required for this type of arrangement to be created, because some of the proverbial bundle of sticks are being transferred even if others are retained.Some people, contemplating death, will just give property to their beneficiaries outright. This is not always a good idea.Some states allow expedited administration of small estates or those where there is a single beneficiary, such that the property will pass directly to the heirs without the necessity of formal administration.Sometimes a property owner will convey the property to what is called a trust, which is a semi-perpetual legal entity that may exist for the specified purpose of holding and managing property. The trustee is the person in charge of the property; the cestui que truste or beneficiary is the person for whose benefit any expenditures are to be made. Passing property to a trust will remove it from the realm of probate court (although trusts are generally subject to continuing court supervision as a matter of law if any mismanagement is alleged); the terms of the trust may be similar to those of a will in providing that the property is to be used by the decedent until death and then distributed to others or held for their future use. (Trusts for the care of minor children are common among wealthy people.)Someone facing an imminent disability may make a power of attorney, which grants another person the right to manage their property and to make other decisions in their stead. The power of attorney must be specified as ‘durable’ if the competency of the maker has deteriorated. A power would allow the attorney-in-fact (the agent) to make disposition of the property in contemplation of imminent death or for other good-faith reasons, prior to the death of the maker. However, a power of attorney expires upon death and an attorney-in-fact does not automatically become a personal representative. A court will only supervise an attorney-in-fact if someone files an appropriate action demanding accounting.If the person has already become incompetent without doing any of this, someone may petition the court to appoint a guardian of the person and/or of the estate. The guardian of the estate has more-or-less the same powers as the attorney-in-fact appointed by a voluntary power, but will be required to report any transactions to the court that appointed them.Quite aside from the mechanics of property transfers, taxes and Medicaid are concerns. Some inter vivos transfers in the nature of inheritance will be treated as such for the purpose of taxation, and as death is often preceded by a lengthy and expensive course of medical treatment, a good estate planner will also be familiar with the rules involving public assistance, medical providers’ rights to liens on property, and so forth, and will be able to analyse the various ways in which some of these schemes will interplay.At any rate, for advice on how any of this might play out in a specific case, or for estate planning advice, you should seek the services of a lawyer in your jurisdiction who does this sort of work.