|
My mother is presently hospitalized, and will be requiring care for several
more weeks. She is not mentally incapacitated (except that she is on fairly
large doses of pain medication, which leave her in a mental fog at times);
she is *physically* incapacitated, unable right now to handle things like
making rounds of telephone calls needed for some insurance coverage
questions, to go around to the apartment manager's office to see about
transferring her lease to a handicapped unit coming available. My sister
and I have been trying to take care of these things for her.
We're going to need a Power of Attorney for these things. Her health care
provider (a branch of the federal government) won't even answer general
questions about switching between two offered programs and not specifically
about her account without a POA on file.
My sister has offered to take care of some of the insurance issues, but she
lives in another state, and there will almost certainly be situations
arising locally that I will have to deal with while she's away. Is there any
reason why a POA cannot/should not be executed naming both of us as agents?
I've seen POAs naming a back-up agent in case the named agent is unable to
perform, but I don't think I've seen one naming multiple agents. I'm
planning right now just to adapt the POA I've got for myself (I know it's
good), but if it changes to include two agents, is there any tricky language
we need to be careful about -- such as using "(Son's name) *AND*
(Daughter's name)..." resulting in any action requiring both our signatures?
We could draw up two POAs, one naming me and another naming my sister, but I
think that's likely to cause confusion, of one is on file someplace and then
the other is placed on file; it's likely to be assumed the latter supplants
the former, isn't it?
I suspect the health care providers will want her patient number information
on their copy of the POA (or will want a second document specifying we're
OK'd to discuss that patient/account); I'm not sure we want that on all of
the POAs that may end up circulating. Should we draw up a separate POA to
fax to them, or will it suffice to write in the information and have her
initial it on one copy?
Any other details we might need to pay attention to in drawing up the POA
for a physically incapacitated person?
Thanks.
--
Robert
|
| |
| |
|
