It’s Richard Morgan, at Morgan and DiSalvo, with another of our Back to the Basics video newsletters on a very important topic: the Georgia financial power of attorney form. So, one of the basic documents that you need, everyone needs, as part of their base estate plan is a financial power of attorney. That document allows your agent, the person you choose, to handle your financial affairs for you if you ever need assistance. They key is, though, as of July 1 of 2017, you must use a particular type of form if you want to get a particular new type of benefit. And, that is that the agent can force a third part to accept the form. Before 2017, the agent could not force a third part to accept the form. We now have that power, but only if you use the right form and it’s signed properly.

So, what is the right form? The right form is either the actual statutory form provided for in the Georgia statute, or one that reflects the language of that form. And “reflect the language of,” we believe it means that … very, very few changes to the actual form itself, but you’re allowed to use special instructions to modify the form. So, you can modify the form with the special instructions. And, that’s the way that we choose to do it. There’s a third way that you can do it, which is brand new as of July 1, 2018, and that is substantially in the form of the statutory form. That’s a little bit different. We’ve chosen the second way.

The key is that you do it, number one. Number two, you only choose a fiduciary you trust beyond any doubt whatsoever. And the third, is that you sign it properly and make sure the form is done well. We personally do not like the statutory form, so we have a lot of special instructions. But whatever you do, just make sure you think about it and do it right.

Richard Morgan, Morgan and DiSalvo.