In Tennessee. a Durable General Power of Attorney<\/strong> is a very powerful legal document that appoints a person or persons to act on your behalf in any matter. The “Attorney-in-Fact<\/a>” can do anything that you can do, including buy, sell or mortgage property, open or close financial accounts, write checks, etc. A power of attorney grants awesome authority<\/em> to the attorney-in-fact and should be used with extreme caution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a recent estate case which was tried in the Chancery Court of Washington County, Tennessee, the Chancellor stated:<\/p>\n\n\n\n [T]his is the worst estate and power of attorney case I\u2019ve seen come through my court. I\u2019ve been on the bench now about twenty-one years and I have seen some real messes so far as operating an estate account, but I have never seen any that are in this bad a shape.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n According to the Tennessee Court of Appeals<\/strong> decision in the case of In Re: Estate of Viola B. Copas<\/a> : In August 1997, Viola Copas (\u201cMother\u201d) and her husband, Clyde Copas (\u201cFather\u201d) executed unrestricted powers of attorney<\/strong> appointing their son, RC, who was one of their three (3) children, as attorney-in-fact<\/strong>. Father subsequently passed away in October 1998. The Mother died in July, 2005. Shortly after the mother’s death the son, RC, was appointed as the Personal Representative <\/a>of her estate. RC’s siblings filed suit to have him removed as Personal Representative<\/strong> of the decedent’s probate estate<\/strong> and a separate suit seeking money damages for misappropriation of funds while he was acting as attorney-in-fact and the executor of the estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trial court found that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Court finds he\u2019s a thief. The total of [Siblings\u2019] missing money is $863,469.38. I say \u201cmissing,\u201d that\u2019s the money that went to [RC] and he admits the he took $709,420.74 from these accounts… The Court notes that [RC]\u2019s use of his power of attorney was abusive and that he used it to profit himself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In the end the trial court entered a judgment against RC and in favor of Siblings for $2,040,276, plus attorney fees totaling $102,576.36. The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgement of the trial court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While this case involves an extreme abuse of a power of attorney<\/strong> for personal gain, it should be kept in mind before you execute a power of attorney, without restrictions, and without caution. To learn more about a Durable General Power of Attorney, the hazards<\/a>, and how it can be properly utilized for your benefit speak to an attorney at law<\/a> who is experienced in estate planning matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tennessee General Power of Attorney and the Hazards In Tennessee. a Durable General Power of Attorney is a very powerful legal document that appoints a person or persons to act on your behalf in any matter. The “Attorney-in-Fact” can do anything that you can do, including buy, sell or mortgage property, open or close financial accounts, write checks, etc. A power of attorney grants awesome authority to the attorney-in-fact and should be used with extreme caution. In a recent estate case which was tried in the Chancery Court of Washington County, Tennessee, the Chancellor stated: [T]his is the worst estate and power of attorney caseRead More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19,26],"tags":[56,148,151,161,214,225,226,267,273],"yst_prominent_words":[440,544,2218,453,1529,537,536,533,397,541,538,535,2013,539,534,2128,2129,2127,485,1482],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-admin","4":"post-1915","6":"format-standard","7":"category-estate_planning_wills_trusts_estates","8":"category-legal-terms","9":"post_tag-attorney-in-fact","10":"post_tag-durable-general-power-of-attorney","11":"post_tag-estate-plan","12":"post_tag-fiduciary","13":"post_tag-last-will-and-testament","14":"post_tag-legal-consequences","15":"post_tag-legal-documents","16":"post_tag-power-of-attorney","17":"post_tag-probate-a-will"},"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Todd Couvillon","author_link":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"hoot-small-preview":false,"hoot-large-preview":false,"hoot-medium-preview":false,"hoot-wide":false,"hoot-extra-wide":false,"hoot-boxcontent":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Todd Couvillon","author_link":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/author\/admin\/"},"uagb_comment_info":172,"uagb_excerpt":"Tennessee General Power of Attorney and the Hazards In Tennessee. a Durable General Power of Attorney is a very powerful legal document that appoints a person or persons to act on your behalf in any matter. The “Attorney-in-Fact” can do anything that you can do, including buy, sell or mortgage property, open or close financial…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purplelawfirm.com\/law-and-you-chattanooga\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}