Reasons to have a durable financial power of attorney

The durable financial power of attorney is simply a way to allow someone else to manage your finances in the event that you become incapacitated and are unable to make those decisions yourself. More precisely, it grants someone legal authority to act on your behalf for financial issues.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Chrissy, we're all about helping people get their affairs in order, doing an estate plan for them. One of the more important documents we do for people is a financial power of attorney.

Attorney Chrissy Merrill: Yes, extremely important document and, of course, Tom, as you just mentioned, related documents. Why? Because the first thing is a financial power of attorney is about you are alive. You are alive but not competent and so you need somebody to be in charge to pay your bills and manage financial accounts for you if you were in that situation. What we know is oftentimes that those documents they should be updated every five years. Why? Because financial institutions do not like them.

You want to make sure that yours is up to date and it starts by having us review it for you. In addition to us reviewing it, Tom, this is something I often tell clients, and that is if you have one and you're so sure that it's going to work for you and it's good, I tell them, "That's super. Have you taken it to your financial institutions or given it to your financial institutions?" Again, it could be in person, it could be mailing it, faxing it, whatever you need to do and the response often, "No, I didn't do that."

Well, folks, it's not us. We're not the ones deciding and this is sometimes why I think people will call us and they're like, "Well, I think it's okay. It's not about us thinking it's okay, it's not about you thinking it's okay, it's about the financial institutions. We encourage people if you have one already take it to them and obviously, we're happy to look at it for you but otherwise you need to update it and/or make sure that it is in compliance with Florida law because it's a very important document if you are alive but not competent, you need to make sure that the people that you trust you're making it easy for them to help you and take care of business if you are not able.

Attorney Tom Olsen: We know this for sure, that is, if you got that financial power attorney from the office supply store guaranteed, banks and other financial institutions are not going to like it.

Attorney Chrissy Merrill: Right on.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Again, folks, we would love to assist you with your estate planning, we do offer a free initial consult. If you've already got a will or a trust, hey, easy, we would review that for you for free.