For example, if you are on a business trip abroad, you can designate someone to pay your bills or do bank transactions on your behalf. Your agent will only follow your orders, so long as you are mentally capable of making decisions for yourself. The agent also takes charge of keeping and organizing records of all transactions he or she made on your behalf. Power Of Attorney And Its Validity Power of attorney can be a tricky thing to do because you are basically giving another person full right to act in your stead in personal and legal matters. This means that the person who you have given the power of attorney to, which is called the agent or the attorney in fact, will have the right to sign legal documents in your name and even have access to your bank accounts, among other things. Before it is too late, you have to designate a trusted person to act and make decisions on your behalf. Should you wait until you become mentally or physically disabled and regret later for not doing it earlier? If you want to protect your assets and secure your financial future, then preparing a POA is one of the best decisions that you will ever make in your life. A power of attorney will only last on the stated date and if there is no date specified, it will cease to be effective when the principal becomes gravely ill, incapacitated or mentally incompetent. The Health Care power of attorney is one that allows a grantee of the document to decide on your health care service should the principal be deemed incapable of making a decision. This is to make sure he/she would always be there in cases of emergency. The person need not be personally present to attend to your errands all the time but at least he/she should be easily contacted through the phone. Does the person know about handling finances? You are entrusting your money and assets to the person. First, you should appoint a person who you have already proven to be trustworthy and reliable. He/She should be highly ethical so as not to defraud you or steal money from you. Second, that person should have the ability to prudently and effectively manage finances. If not, he/she should be humble and wise enough to seek assistance from experts and professionals to make sure your finances are well managed and handled.