How to Money · Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Beth Pinsker highlighted that financial institutions frequently push back against valid powers of attorney, not out of malice, but to prevent fraud. This creates a significant hurdle for consumers, often requiring them to be persistent or even resort to legal action to have their authority recognized. She noted that this issue was a key catalyst for her writing her book.
“So they don't fight it because they don't believe in it. They fight it because they're trying to protect their customers. So it really is just a case of them being extremely, extremely cautious to prevent fraud, right, So you can't fault them for that, but it does make the consumer experience very, very fraud because nine times out of ten, what I've heard from people is they go to the bank with the power of attorney form and the bank says no.”
“This is where my whole journey turning this into a book really started is because I had written, you know, a column or two a about my mom and taking care of her, and then I wrote this this power of attorney article and it became like the most well read thing I've ever written in my life, and I've written a lot of articles, and so I knew that there was just this hunger and this frustration with the system and what we don't know.”