The fights I’ve watched between adult siblings rarely start with the will. They start with the Power of Attorney.
The POA is the document that grants one person the legal authority to act on a parent’s behalf — to write checks, sign contracts, make medical decisions, sell assets — when the parent can no longer act on their own. Whoever holds it has effectively been handed the steering wheel. And in a family where the parent has cognitive decline or serious illness, the steering wheel matters in a way the will doesn’t yet.
A sibling who feels excluded from the POA decision — “why was Sister chosen and I wasn’t?” — often doesn’t wait for the parent to die before the resentment surfaces. The conflict starts when the POA gets exercised. When Mom’s accounts get consolidated and Brother wasn’t told. When the family home gets put on the market and not everybody agrees. When medical decisions get made and one sibling thinks they should have had a say.
This post is about preventing that. What a Power of Attorney actually is. The two kinds (financial and healthcare) and how they typically get assigned. Why POAs become flashpoints, and the structural choices that keep them from becoming family feuds. And what to do if you’re already inside one.
If you haven’t read it, the foundational read: Estate Planning Checklist for Adult Children.
What a Power of Attorney is.
There are two POAs in caregiving conversations, and they’re separate documents.
A Durable Power of Attorney (DPOA) for Finances authorizes a designated person — the agent or attorney-in-fact — to manage the parent’s financial affairs. Pay bills, sign tax returns, manage investments, sell or buy real estate, handle insurance, deal with banks. “Durable” means the document remains valid through the parent’s incapacity (a “non-durable” POA terminates the moment capacity is lost — which is exactly when you need it to work).
A Health Care Power of Attorney (HCPOA) — sometimes called a healthcare proxy or healthcare surrogate — authorizes a designated person to make medical decisions when the parent can’t speak for themselves. Hospital admissions, treatment consent, end-of-life decisions, choice of providers.
The two POAs do different jobs. Many families combine them by naming the same person to both roles. Others split them deliberately — financial responsibilities to one sibling, medical decisions to another. Both arrangements work; neither is universally correct.
Why the POA decision is so charged.
A POA isn’t just paperwork. It’s a public statement of trust. When a parent picks one child as their financial agent, they’re saying — formally and on paper — that this child is the one trusted with the family’s financial life. The other children may understand, intellectually, that someone has to be picked. Emotionally, the moment can land as ranking. As a referendum on which child mattered most.
The fights I’ve seen play out from there tend to fall into three patterns:
1. Surprise. The non-chosen siblings find out about the POA after the fact — usually because the chosen sibling starts making decisions and the others realize they have no standing. The hurt isn’t only about the decision; it’s about not having been part of the conversation.
2. Suspicion of self-dealing. The POA holder makes a financial decision — moves accounts, sells the family home, hires a particular attorney, pays themselves for caregiving — and the other siblings perceive bias or self-enrichment. Even when behavior is clean, the perception of conflict is hard to dispel without proactive transparency.
3. Disagreement about specific decisions. The POA holder thinks Mom should move into memory care. The distance siblings think she’s fine at home. The POA has the authority; the others have opinions and grief. Without an agreed framework for these decisions, the family fragments.
Structural choices that prevent fights.
The decisions that prevent POA conflicts are usually made when the document is drafted. Once a parent has signed a POA naming one child, restructuring it after a conflict starts is harder.
Here are the structural patterns that work:
1. Co-agents, with explicit decision rules. Some POAs name two adult children as co-agents — both have authority, but the document can require either joint approval for major decisions or allow either to act independently for routine ones. Co-agency reduces “ranking” optics. It also slows decision-making and can create deadlock if the co-agents disagree. Not every family suits co-agency; high-conflict families often shouldn’t use it.
2. Successor agents named clearly. Even when one child is the primary agent, the document should name a successor (a second child, a sibling of the parent, or a professional) in case the primary can’t serve. A POA without a clear successor is a single point of failure.
3. Periodic accountability built in. Some families have the POA agent provide quarterly summaries to the other adult children — what bills got paid, what decisions got made, what’s coming up. This is voluntary on the agent’s part; the document doesn’t require it. But the agent who proactively shares information avoids 80% of the suspicion that produces fights. Transparency is cheaper than the conflict it prevents.
4. Family meeting before the POA is signed. The most powerful prevention is the parent explaining their choice to all the adult children together, while still capable. “I’ve decided to name X as my agent. Here’s why. Here’s how I’d like decisions to be made.” The siblings don’t all have to agree with the choice. They have to hear it from the parent. The POA conversation that doesn’t happen in the parent’s voice happens in the siblings’ voices instead, and it’s worse.
5. Professional or independent agent for high-conflict families. Some families have such fraught dynamics that any sibling-as-agent will produce conflict. In those cases, a professional fiduciary, an attorney, a bank trust department, or a non-family-member friend may be the right choice. Costs more. Eliminates the family-loyalty conflict.
6. Specific limits in the document. A POA can be drafted to require unanimous approval for certain decisions (selling the home, large transfers, hiring counsel) while allowing the agent to act unilaterally for routine matters. The document is more flexible than most families realize.
What the POA agent should actually do.
If you’re the POA agent, the patterns that prevent fights:
Communicate proactively, not reactively. Don’t wait for the other siblings to ask. Send a monthly or quarterly update — what bills got paid, what major decisions are coming, what the parent’s situation looks like. Three-paragraph emails are fine. The siblings who don’t get information assume the worst.
Document everything you spend. Keep receipts. Keep a log. The agent who can produce records when challenged is the agent who isn’t successfully challenged.
Avoid even the appearance of self-dealing. If you’re using the parent’s funds to pay yourself for caregiving, do it under a written caregiver agreement that all the siblings know about, not as informal reimbursements. If you’re storing the parent’s car at your house, document why and for how long. The transactions that make sense in your head don’t always make sense from the outside.
Bring the family in for major decisions. Even if you have the legal authority to act unilaterally, the major decisions — selling the home, moving the parent to a facility, large medical decisions — should be discussed with the other siblings before action. You don’t need their approval. You need their inclusion. It costs you a phone call. It saves you a feud.
Get help when you need it. A good elder law attorney can advise on specific decisions, document them properly, and provide cover when family members challenge you. Your time is worth more than the attorney’s fee.
What the non-agent siblings should do.
If you’re a sibling who isn’t the POA agent:
Don’t second-guess from a distance. The agent is making decisions in real time, with information you don’t have. Trust before suspicion. If something looks wrong, ask before accusing.
Stay informed without being demanding. Ask the agent for periodic updates. Most agents welcome the transparency. Asking respectfully is different from monitoring suspiciously.
Don’t position yourself as the alternate authority. The POA is the authority. Even if you disagree, the legal standing belongs to the agent. Disagreeing is fine; trying to act in parallel — calling the doctor independently, instructing the bank, communicating with attorneys — undermines the agent and creates legal mess.
If you have specific concerns, raise them directly. “I’m concerned about the decision to sell the house. Can we talk about it?” — clear, direct, not accusatory — works better than complaining to other siblings or building a case quietly.
Save the courtroom for the last resort. A challenge to the POA is a serious step. It usually requires evidence of incapacity at signing, undue influence, or significant breach of fiduciary duty. The bar is high. Disagreement about specific decisions doesn’t usually meet the standard.
When the POA is being abused.
Genuine POA abuse — the agent stealing from the parent, ignoring the parent’s wishes, isolating the parent from other family members, making decisions that benefit themselves at the parent’s expense — is real and worth taking seriously. The signs:
- Unexplained large transfers from the parent’s accounts
- Sudden changes to beneficiary designations or estate documents
- The parent being isolated from other family members
- The agent refusing to provide information or accounting
- Decisions that don’t match the parent’s stated wishes or established patterns
If you suspect genuine abuse, the response is escalation through the right channels:
- An elder law attorney for an independent assessment
- Adult Protective Services (APS) if the parent’s safety is at risk
- The court for a formal challenge to the POA, if warranted
Don’t try to handle it informally. Don’t confront the agent without legal counsel. Don’t take action that could be characterized later as your own self-dealing.
“The POA agent who proactively shares information avoids 80% of the suspicion that produces fights. Transparency is cheaper than the conflict it prevents.”
FROM AN AGENT WHO COMMUNICATED:
Across fifteen years of caregiving for parents and stepparents, the structure that worked best in our family wasn’t the one with the most legal protections. It was the one with the most communication.
When I was acting as the practical decision-maker for my parents — alongside my sister, who held authority of her own — the pattern that kept the family aligned wasn’t formal accountability. It was visibility. My sister and I told each other what was happening, what was coming, and what we were thinking before we acted. No surprises. No after-the-fact explanations. The decisions weren’t always easy, but they were almost never contested, because everyone with standing had been part of the conversation.
What I’ve watched in other families — including ones I’ve worked with through ElderHonor — is the version where one sibling becomes the sole decision-maker by virtue of holding the POA, and the others find out about the decisions weeks later. The siblings who feel excluded don’t fight about whether the decisions were correct. They fight about not having been part of the process. That’s a structural problem, not a legal one.
The POA is the legal authority. Family alignment is the relational authority. Both are real. The agent who has only the legal one is the agent who watches the family fragment around them, even when every individual decision was defensible.
Honor is in the name of our company for a reason: ElderHonor. Honoring our parents includes honoring the family that has to live in the decisions long after the parent is gone. The POA is for the parent’s benefit. The communication around the POA is for everyone else’s.
Where to start today.
If your parent doesn’t have a POA in place yet:
- Have the conversation. Not the document conversation — the “who do you trust to act on your behalf” conversation. With all the adult children, ideally with the parent leading.
- Engage an elder law attorney to draft both POAs (financial and healthcare) and any related documents. See Roles of Elder Law Attorneys in Caregiving.
- Sign the documents in front of witnesses as state law requires, and distribute copies to the agent, successor, primary care physician, and family members who should know they exist.
- Set the communication norm. Establish, while everyone is healthy, what kind of updates the family will share once the POA is exercised.
If a POA is in place and the family is starting to fragment:
- Open the channel of communication. A monthly email from the agent describing decisions and upcoming choices solves most disputes before they escalate.
- Have a family meeting — facilitated if needed by an elder law attorney, family therapist, or trusted neutral party.
- Don’t let small grievances accumulate. A pattern of small unaddressed grievances becomes the litigation later.
If you suspect genuine abuse:
- Get an independent legal assessment before confronting anyone.
- Document specific concerns with dates, transactions, and evidence.
- Escalate through the right channels — APS, the court, the elder law attorney — rather than informal pressure.
You’ve got this.
The toolkit’s Documents and Conversations modules walk through the POA setup, the family-meeting framework, and the communication patterns that keep the legal authority from becoming a family fault line — built so the agent can act with confidence and the family can stay together through the decisions.
Additional articles, some of which are in the article above.
- The Estate Planning Checklist for Adult Children — already linked inline; foundational read.
- The Roles of Elder Law Attorneys in Caregiving — already linked inline; for engaging counsel.
- The Why Siblings Fight Over Inheritance — companion piece on family-dynamics layer.
- The How to Divide Caregiving Roles Among Family — for division-of-labor framework.
- The Living Wills: A Guide for Caregivers — HCPOA pairs with the living will.
- Resource Library — specifically NAELA, AAA, APS entries.
Some additional notes:
POA rules vary substantially by state — including witness/notarization requirements, specific powers granted by default, requirements for selling real estate, and procedures for revocation or challenge.
The “co-agent” framing assumes a state that allows multiple agents under one POA; not every state does. Some states require separate documents naming each agent.
The “elder abuse” guidance directs readers to Adult Protective Services (APS), which exists in every state but with different intake and reporting procedures. Verify your state-specific entry point.
The “80%” figure in the quote is editorial / pattern-based, not from a specific study.
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