I took a call from a polite woman this morning. Her father has accounts at Morgan Stanley. Her father is in a home for Veterans. She took her father's durable power of attorney to Morgan Stanley recently so that she can transact her father's affairs. Her father's ability to manage his accounts has diminished.
The brokerage firm basically told her, "We do not honor any power of attorney form except for our own. Take the Morgan Stanley Power of Attorney form to your father, have him sign it in the presence of a Notary, and bring it back to us. Then - and only then - can you transact your father's accounts.
Hopefully, her father still has the mental capacity and physical ability to sign the Morgan Stanley form. If not, the daughter will have no choice but to go through a difficult court interdiction proceeding to have her father declared legally incompetent.
This is just another of many instances where third parties sometimes don't honor a durable power of attorney. My advice - take your Louisiana durable power of attorney to your banks, financial institutions, and investment firms and make sure they will honor it when your Agent needs to use it. It doesn't do any good to have the best Louisiana Durable Power of Attorney in the world, if third parties won't honor it. So make sure they will honor it in advance.
At the end of the call the polite woman asked me to transfer her to our accounting department so she could give them her billing information so we could bill her for the call. I gladly told her, "We never charge anybody for a phone call."
If you need help with Louisiana estate planning issues, feel free to send me an email at paul@rabalaislaw.com, or call our office tollfree at 866-491-3884 to discuss how we might help you accomplish all of your Louisiana estate planning objectives.
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