A husband and wife have a joint account together. Both husband and wife are elderly and in poor health. The husband have his own POA and the wife have her own POA. The attorney in fact are not the same person therefore they each have their own attorney in fact. Both attorney in facts came into the branch, requesting to be added to the joint account. We reached out to the attorney that completed the POAs and his recommendation was to separate the funds.

How can we separate the funds when it's a joint account with survivorship? How would you handle this at your bank?

Thanks in advance.

bump

I wouldn't seperate the funds. After verifying the legitimacy of the POA's we would structure the account as follows:

John Smith
Adam Sandler POA for John Smith
Sally Smith
Betty Crocker POA for Sally Smith

The decision to separate or not separate the funds is not the bank's decision to make. The account holders, via their agents, are the ones who can make this call.

Like Rock Chucker suggested above, acknowledge the validity of the POAs once you've completed your review of the documents, and make the appropriate changes on the account to reflect the access rights of each attorney in fact. If they choose to go through with separating the funds, that is entirely up to them.

It's sounds like the POAs want to be added as joint owners on the account? that's what I am reading.

A POA is not an owner, they are only authorized to act in the capacity of the grantor of the POA. JacPCB has given the correct advice.

Only an echo: The attorney who created this mess can certainly advise the attorneys-in-fact what to do. He cannot advise you. Hopefully, you have your own lawyer, but I don't think he or she will want any part of this conversation.

As soon as one of these folks dies, it will be apparent to the other person's attorney-in-fact that closing the account was not a smart thing to do. If it had not been done, his principal would now own all of the funds.

I guess I am not seeing what the big issue is with adding the two POAs. You have two owners and each POA only acts on behalf of the person who gave them that authority. So, essentially, what you are left with is still just a joint account. Either one of the owners can withdraw any and all the funds and close the account without the other one's signature or consent, so now an agent can do that on their behalf.

In some states, one person can designate more than one POA at a time, and even that doesn't present any issues, as long as the POA acts within their authority.

This is the key statement. For example, most states do not permit the POA to "gift" funds unless the POA document specifically grants this authority, meaning that they are not permitted to change ownership of an account or designate beneficiaries on behalf of the principal.

If an account owner wants to close an account and open an new one on their name only or request a cashier's check be payable to just them due to divorce, conflict, etc. we can do that. If a POA makes the same request on a joint account, we likely need to make the cashier's check payable both owners or open a new joint account. Get it wrong and the bank could find itself on the receiving end of a lawsuit. So I agree it is not wrong to have two different POAs representing each owner, but some institutions may choose not to accept the legal and financial risks of managing the account in this fashion.