Continuing the theme over recent weeks of conflicts of law between various jurisdictions, the way in which the powers of attorney provisions operate in each Australian state are very relevant.
Effectively, while each state has its own legislation (and completely unique forms) for powers of attorney, there is also legislation that is designed to ensure that each state will acknowledge each other state’s documentation.
While this theoretical position is comforting, practically the situation is anything but satisfactory.
For example, the enduring power of attorney document in New South Wales is less than five pages. The equivalent document in Queensland runs to around 20 pages.
For third parties (including banks), who are used to (in New South Wales) seeing a very short document, they will often be quite unsettled to be presented with the much longer Queensland version.
In a practical sense, we quite often therefore arrange for enduring powers of attorney to be prepared in each state where the client has substantive investments, particularly if they own real property in more than one jurisdiction.
A more detailed explanation of how to craft multiple, complementary, powers if attorney is explored in a previous post.
** For the trainspotters, ‘Where’s the proof man?’ is a line from Lou Reed’s song from 1989, ‘Dirty Boulevard’