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Durable Power of Attorney
Legal/Rights§ 01 — Definition
A durable power of attorney is a document in which a competent adult appoints someone to act on their behalf in financial and legal matters; durable means the authority survives the signer's later incapacity. An advance health care directive (sometimes a health care power of attorney or health care proxy) does the same for medical decisions and records access, and is normally paired with a HIPAA authorization so the agent can actually obtain records. Parents need these two documents for THEMSELVES, so that an accident or illness does not leave their child's care and finances frozen while a court appoints a conservator. Separately, an autistic adult who understands the documents can sign their own, naming a parent as agent — which in many situations achieves what the family wanted from a conservatorship without a court case or any loss of rights.
§ 02 — Why it matters for benefits
These are the cheapest documents in the plan and the ones most often skipped. For a young adult with capacity to sign, they are also the practical alternative to conservatorship, and courts in states with less-restrictive-alternative requirements will ask whether they were tried first.
