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. [Read more…] about Preventing Family Feuds Over Power of Attorney