Why “having a POA” isn’t the same as having one that works.
A son came to see us, holding a document he thought solved everything.
His mother had given him power of attorney years before. She’d recently been moved into memory care, and he needed to manage her finances — pay the facility, handle her accounts, keep her life running. He walked into her bank, document in hand, expecting it to be simple.
It wasn’t.
The bank looked at the power of attorney and declined to accept it. It was old. It didn’t include some of the specific language they required. And the staff were worried — if they let him act and something was wrong with the document, the bank could be on the hook. He explained the situation. He showed them the medical records. It didn’t matter. Their policy was their policy, and the answer was no.
His mother could no longer sign a new one. She was past the point of being able to understand it. So the only door left was the one no one wanted: petitioning the court for guardianship — at exactly the moment the family was already stretched thin.
When he told me the story, he kept saying the same thing: “But I had the power of attorney. I did what I was supposed to do.”
He had. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t plan. The problem was that the document hadn’t been kept current, and it wasn’t written to survive a bank’s scrutiny.
| A power of attorney isn’t a piece of paper you sign once and forget. It’s a tool that has to be maintained — reviewed, updated, and written to be accepted — so that when your family hands it across the counter, the answer is yes. |
Why a bank can say no
Most people assume a power of attorney is a master key — sign it once, and it opens every door for the rest of your life. In practice, the people on the other side of the counter don’t see it that way.
A bank, a brokerage, or a title company is being asked to hand over control of someone else’s money based on a piece of paper. If that paper turns out to be invalid, revoked, or forged, the institution can be left holding the bag. So they protect themselves. They look for documents that are recent, that spell out the exact authority being used, and that don’t raise questions they can’t answer.
A power of attorney can be refused for reasons that have nothing to do with whether it’s legally valid:
- It’s old, and the institution doubts it’s still in force.
- It doesn’t expressly grant the specific power being requested.
- It’s a bare-bones statutory form that leaves too much unsaid.
- The signer can no longer confirm it, and no one is left to vouch for it.
By the time a family discovers the problem, it’s usually too late to fix — because the one person who could sign a new document no longer can.
What a durable power of attorney should actually do
A power of attorney done right is built to be accepted, not just to be signed. For our Arkansas clients, that means a financial power of attorney that:
- Is durable, so it survives the incapacity it’s meant to handle.
- Spells out specific powers — banking, real estate, taxes, retirement accounts, business interests — instead of relying on vague catch-all language.
- Names backups, so one person’s unavailability doesn’t stop everything.
- Stays separate from the healthcare documents, because money decisions and medical decisions are different jobs.
- It keeps current, so it doesn’t get waved off as “too old.”
We also generally recommend a separate healthcare power of attorney, HIPAA authorization, and living will, so the person you trust with your care can actually get the information and make the calls when it counts. Everyone over the age of eighteen needs these documents — a parent’s legal authority over a child ends at that birthday.
This is what stewardship looks like
At A Good Steward Firm, we talk about estate planning as stewardship — caring well for what you’ve been given so that it blesses the people who come after you. A power of attorney is one of the quietest, most important pieces of that. It’s the document that lets someone you trust step in and carry the load when you can’t.
But stewardship isn’t a one-time act. A plan you sign and forget slowly drifts out of date — until the day a family member is standing at a bank counter, holding paper that no longer works. That’s why our clients aren’t handed a binder and sent on their way. Through our Good Steward Maintenance Program, we keep documents reviewed, updated, and ready — so that when your family hands one across the counter, the answer is yes.
If it’s been more than a few years since you looked at your power of attorney — or if you’ve never had one drafted — that’s the conversation worth having now, while it’s still easy to have.
Review your powers of attorney before you need them.
Call L. Jennings Law to make sure the documents your family is counting on will actually work when the moment comes.
