I'm curious as to whether a Power of Attorney should be allowed on a joint account. I recently attended a seminar where the presenter stated that she would not allow a POA on a joint account. I have been looking thru the Indiana Code on Power of Attorney's but I can't really find anything specifically about this. Any thoughts on this? I can understand why - but then if the attorney in fact has power to act as the principal - can we even prevent this? We do not currently add attorney in facts to the signature card. We currently scan the POA into our system and make notes on the "Person" level of the principal. So this note would pop up on any account the principal has - even a joint account. I'm worried now that we may need to change our procedures if we shouldn't be allowing POA's on joint accounts. How do other banks in Indiana handle this??

Thanks

I might need to clarify this just a bit. My question is - Should we allow an attorney in fact to do transactions on a joint account that the principal is an owner on? For instance - I have a joint account with a good friend of mine. The joint account is mainly for my good friends use to get back on her feet and she asked me to be on the account with her, for whatever reason. I am now having some issues and have named my husband as my attorney in fact. Should a bank allow him access to this joint account I have my good friend? Or should he only have access to any single ownership accounts that I currently have?

I've never seen this particular situation and without talking to my deposit operations person and/or attorney I'm not sure how we would handle it.

You may want to look at the following. There are potential repercussions for refusing a valid POA.

IC 30-5-9-9
Persons refusing to accept authority of attorney in fact

Thanks Dan for your response!