BEWARE OF THE NEW POWER OF ATTORNEY LAW
As of January 1, 2010, we have a new power of attorney law in Colorado. This new law has two main purposes. One is to make it more difficult for folks to give their agents certain “hot powers” covering several sensitive areas. The other is to make it easier for the law to come down on and punish agents with powers of attorney when they abuse their powers and take advantage of their principles. All of this is good, but will cause some short-term problems.
As with any new law, there is always confusion. We had a case the other day in our office where a bank refused to accept our client’s old power of attorney, saying that the old power of attorney was no longer valid since there was a new power of attorney law that went into affect at the first of the year. That is simply not the case, and we had to spend an inordinate amount of time working with the bank and its legal counsel to persuade them that the old power of attorney was just fine. In other words, just because we have a new power of attorney law does not mean that your old power of attorney is invalid. It just means that any new power of attorney should be drafted in accordance with the new law so that it will be more readily accepted by financial institutions, including credit unions, banks, title insurance companies, hospital administrators and securities firms.
If you haven’t updated your power of attorney in the last three or four years, now is the perfect time to do so. Call Diana in our office at (303) 409-3563 if you would like to schedule a time to discuss this issue and review your other estate planning documents, as well.
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