What is Power of Attorney? We would like to share with you some real examples of what are the important clauses in General Power of Attorney and Special Power of Attorney. In which cases Power of Attorney should be used, what are their limitations or what are their drawbacks? In which cases Power of Attorney becomes invalid.

What is Power of Attorney, suppose you cannot take any financial or personal decision yourself, you cannot go anywhere to sign any document for any reason, by signing Power of Attorney you can appoint another trusted person to make decisions or sign any document on your behalf.

It is a legal document. Through which the right to take any financial or personal decision is given from one person to another, the person giving Power of Attorney is called Principal. And the one who gets the Power of Attorney, we call him Agent. And they can have different names.

In some power of attorney you must have seen that executive is written for the principal. And the agent is written as attorney or we can also call the principal as grantor. Because he is providing the authority of power of attorney either if you have a health problem, or you are physically handicapped, you cannot go anywhere, suppose your health is not allowing, then you can give power of attorney.

For example suppose you live in a foreign country and you want to sell a property or execute any other document and you cannot come to India or go to any other country where you have to execute that document, then in that case also you can give power of attorney to any trusted person who is present there locally and he can sign or execute any document on your behalf

So there can be another reason also, suppose you are very busy, you are a business owner, you may have to execute many documents, so you cannot be present everywhere, then you can give power of attorney to any of your employees with some limited powers so that he can execute the document on your behalf.

Power of attorney is very prevalent in businesses, because the owner of a business cannot be present everywhere, or a senior officer cannot be present everywhere, there can be another reason, suppose, if there is an elderly person, someone is very old, and he cannot take his own decision or that moment is not possible for him, even then you can give power of attorney to take any of your financial or personal decisions.

The power of attorney which is generally given is given for wealth management or property and money management. Or it is also given for personal care, like we told that if there is a very old person, he is very elderly, he cannot take care of himself, then he can give power of attorney. Who can take decisions on his behalf in any emergency situation. It may also happen that someone is mentally incapacitated and he cannot take his own decision, then power of attorney can be given.

What Is Power Of Attorney And What Are Its Types

To explain, we will take the example of a girl named Renuka. Renuka is a married woman and this is her husband. Renuka had a dream since childhood that when she grows up, she will build her own house, that is, she will have her husband’s house, she also wanted to build her own house. Renuka fulfilled this dream with her hard work, but we all know that whenever a house is bought, there is a name transfer transaction which we call registry in which names are changed in the papers. That registry was originally scheduled to happen on 20 September 2024.

It could neither be extended nor postponed because the other parties were considering this date appropriate, but there was a small problem in this whole situation. That problem was that on this date Renuka was not going to be in India but in America. Renuka was a professor. And she had a very important conference in America which she could not miss at all. Now Renuka was in a big dilemma whether to get the house registered which is her childhood dream.

Renuka thought if this registration work can be done by someone else on her behalf. Then she immediately thought that I am married, my husband can go and get the registration done on my behalf. As soon as this thought came to her mind, Renuka told her husband that you are going to get the registration done on my behalf.

Renuka Husband was very surprised. He thought how can another person give me permission to sign or get the registration done on your behalf. If I go there unnecessarily, he will scold me that how did you come, this is your wife’s house. So Renuka explains to her husband that look, there is a document which we call Power of Attorney. If I sign it and give it to you and you show it to someone, then he will give you permission. I will give from my side

Power of attorney is a document using which a person can get his work done by another person, meaning the second person can go and do that work on behalf of the first person, so here if husband takes the power of attorney to the registry office and shows it to the registrar, then he will allow husband to sign on behalf of Renuka, so power of attorney is a very important document through which you can transfer your powers to someone else.

Now let’s understand the name of the parties a little here, the person who is transferring the power is called the principal, here the one who was transferring was Renuka, so who is the principal, Renuka, but the person who receives the powers, we can call him agent or attorney, anything, so what will we call husband here, he will be called the agent or attorney of Renuka, so what is power of attorney.

Meaning it has legal value, its value is considered in law. The person who receives the authority is called the agent or attorney fact and the subject i.e. the person who transfers the powers is called the principal.

The meaning of power of attorney must have become clear. Now let’s talk about its types. There are many types of power of attorney like general power of attorney, special power of attorney, durable non durable and many more but the two main types of attorneys that are general power of attorney and special power of attorney.

We will tell you about both of these and what it means. To understand the general power of attorney, we will again take the example of Renuka and her husband. See Renuka was not in India for a few months, so there would be many such works that would have to be done on her behalf. If she had given permission to her husband to do all these things, then this is called general power of attorney, that is she tells her husband to come to the bank and sign on my behalf, he can go there and get the registration done, I have to sign a document, do a deal, have another meeting, you get everything done on my behalf, then this is called general power of attorney, that is Renuka is basically giving permission to her husband to do all her work, she is not giving permission to do any specific work.

But the second one is our special power of attorney, the example of Renuka that I just gave you was a special power of attorney because what was happening there was that Renuka was only transferring the power to register the house to her husband, so there was a specific work, there was a specific work that she wanted her husband to do, so such a power of attorney is called special power of attorney, so if you give permission to do all the work and then transfer it to general power, then it is called general power of attorney.