I hold a Power of Attorney from a family member. At the time of creation of the Power a few years ago, neither the Lawyer who prepared it nor the Notary Public who notarized it, thought it necessary to provide on the Power document a specimen of my signature,
The document has been accepted as regular by several leading Banks and Mutual Funds. Recently one Mutual Fund has rejected the P/A stating reason “the Power Holders signature is missing on the document” That is why I am raising this question,
Tags: Attorney, document, holder, include, mandatory, Power, signature, specimnt
Legally, “no”, it is not required.
Many POA forms have a place for specimen signature. This is an aid in identifying you. If it’s not used, the other party should have some other way of satisfying themselves that you are the person named in the POA.
Having said that, I will now tell you that I have had the same problem. A clerk is used to seeing forms with specimen signatures and this doesn’t have one, or (in my case) looks at the form and sees a blank space and says “Oh, look! A blank space! This isn’t valid. ” I have had to have a talk to a supervisor and point out that specimen signatures are optional and then everything went through all right. But it was a pain.
The same problem can occur with successor trustees on living trust documents.