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Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Change to New York Power of Attorney Form

On January 27th of this year, New York changed its law regarding the requirements necessary to have a valid financial power of attorney. Some the more important changes include:
  1. Two people must now witness the Grantor's signature;
  2. The agent must now sign the power of attorney and have his/her signature notarized;
  3. If you want your agent to make gifts for tax planning (or any other purpose), you must execute a Major Gift Rider; and
  4. You may now have an independent person act as a monitor for the agent.
These changes become effective September 1, 2009. (NOTE - Original bill noted an effective date of March 1.)

Thanks to the Wills, Trusts & Estates Professor Blog for bringing this to my attention. Thanks to Frank Farkas of the Jewish Association for the Aged for bringing the change of the effective date to my attention.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Does this new law require all existing Power of Attorney Forms to be re-executed in order to be valid? Although that may be best practice in general and the most widely accepted without triggering questions, are all existing POA's going to be invalid when this goes into affect on Sep 1, 2009?

Kevin A. Pollock, J.D., LL.M. said...

Dear RickMo,

It does appear that older Powers of Attorney will be grandfathered - so they are still valid. However, you will probably find that most reputable financial institutions will no longer accept the outdated forms. Accordingly, as a practical matter, yes - they will need to be redone.