Wanna feel like a hero with superpowers? Sadly, the Powers of Attorney (POA) document won’t do that, even though Marvel’s Daredevil might be the role model (he’s a blind lawyer by day). But CareGivingOldGuy has found the POA paperwork essential many a time….and things get wicked without it.
Just last month, OldGuy spent three hours with a telecom’s customer service…yeah, so common, even in these days of private space travel and whiz-bang technology. It goes back to my own ticked off attitude and laziness in not sending them a copy of the POA years ago, after other hours of frustrating phone calls, trying to change the name and account privileges on their bill.
So what are these mythical “Powers of Attorney” ? Basically, it’s a document that allows a person to make legal, financial and/or healthcare decisions for another person who can not do it on their own. Sometimes the lingo is that an “agent” can sign for the “principal”; some financial companies call it “attorney-in-fact”.
A non-profit’s website about POA, including videos and FAQ has a link underlined here. For those fluent in legalese, the underlined next link is WA State’s statute. There are a bunch of definitions and rules, including a principal’s “incapacity”, what an agent can do, who can witness the signing, what to do if a person can’t sign, etc.
We didn’t learn about it from anyone in healthcare, but from a family friend who is a financial advisor, and we had a real lawyer template the documents for each of us. He gave us separate ones of healthcare decisions and financial decisions.
The document for a healthcare POA, combined with an Advanced Directive, is available for free from a WA non-profit. Others evidently have free financial POA forms; one lists nine types!
Even though WA state is a “community property state,” a married couple can each maintain separate accounts, including checking, savings and retirement accounts. Even with the POA in hand, signed and notarized, untangling things with her employer and her accounts was a hassle that took years. I found out recently that a credit union would not allow a mortgage refinancing if one of the owners needed a POA.
She never liked financial matters, and her signature was already changing by the time we had the documents notarized. But without the POA, one can only imagine how much more frustrating these issues could be (some financial institutions wanted a letter from a doctor about the diagnosis!).
The healthcare POA was important for the two trips to an ER in the last few years. Some financial company insisted on the original POA, which I must have accidentally mailed away. So we found the POA’s imperfect but essential….
…but back to customer service. The company has changed its name at least four times in the decades since we’ve had them, but we didn’t complain (!) I simply wanted to move my name, already on the bill, to first position, instead of my wife’s name, for transactions. Tried years ago, they wanted a POA, I couldn’t be bothered.
Last month, after repeated mailings about an upgrade, we called in to decline the expensive offer. However, the nice person thought she could fix the name issue.
Somehow the old account got cancelled, a new one was created, with new charges, online access to customer service denied, we got basically double billed, etc….now we’ll have to wait and see if that last hour-long call fixed it #&%@!!!!!
If not, I’m gonna try to call in DareDevil to get some blind justice [or become one of many SuperCurmudgeons.]
kalhh @ pixabay.com CC0
