Free Oklahoma Non-Durable (General) Power of Attorney Form

Oklahoma threw out its power of attorney law and started again, and the default reversed in the process. An Oklahoma Non-Durable (General) Power of Attorney gives an agent authority over your financial affairs and states expressly that the authority ends on your incapacity. The Uniform Power of Attorney Act at sections 3001 to 3045 of title 58 of the Oklahoma Statutes governs it, and it took effect on November 1, 2021.

Under the Oklahoma Uniform Power of Attorney Act, Oklahoma Statutes Title 58, Sections 3001 through 3045, a power of attorney is durable unless it expressly states that it terminates when the principal becomes incapacitated. The Act also sets rules for signing the document and identifies which powers of attorney fall within its scope.

Say That It Ends at Incapacity

Under the Act a power of attorney stays durable unless it expressly provides for termination on the principal’s incapacity. Section 3004 puts that in a single line, so your document has to carry that express provision or it will outlive your capacity.

Signing and Notarizing

Your signature is what the Act asks for, or a signature made in your conscious presence by another individual you direct to sign your name. Acknowledging it before a notary public, or another individual authorized by law to take acknowledgments, makes it presumptively genuine. Section 3005 sets out both points and calls for no witnesses.

What the Act Covers

Section 3003 applies the Act to all powers of attorney with listed exceptions, among them a power coupled with an interest in the subject of the power, including one given to or for the benefit of a creditor in connection with a credit transaction. An ordinary personal document is not in that group.

Because it is describing a repealed statute. Until November 1, 2021, Oklahoma ran on the Uniform Durable Power of Attorney Act at sections 1071 to 1077 of title 58, adopted in 1988. Under that Act durability was not the default: a document became durable only if it carried prescribed words, and Oklahoma’s version of those words was unusual in covering the principal’s extended absence alongside disability and incapacity.

House Bill 2548 replaced that Act with the Uniform Power of Attorney Act at sections 3001 and following. The direction of the rule flipped. Under the old law you wrote words in to make a document durable; under the current law you write words in to stop it being durable.

That matters for anyone working from a template or an article rather than the statute. A great deal of Oklahoma power of attorney guidance still cites section 1071 or section 1072, and a form built on the old Act will be aimed at the opposite default. If you are drafting an Oklahoma Non-Durable (General) Power of Attorney today, the express termination provision is the thing you must not leave out.

Documents validly executed under the old Act before November 1, 2021 were not invalidated by the change, so an older Oklahoma power of attorney is judged by the rules in force when it was signed.

1. Check that whatever you are drafting from cites sections 3001 and following, not section 1071.
2. Write in your details, your agent’s, and a successor, then set out the authority.
3. Write the express provision terminating the document on your incapacity, tracking section 3004.
4. Give it a stopping point: a date, or the errand whose completion ends it.
5. Sign it, or have another individual sign your name in your conscious presence.
6. Take it to a notary public, whose acknowledgment makes the signature presumptively genuine.
7. Pass the original to your agent and file a dated copy.

A complete Oklahoma Non-Durable (General) Power of Attorney carries:

• Your name and address, and your agent’s
• Any successor agent
• The authority granted, and nothing wider
• The express provision terminating it on your incapacity
• An end date or defined task
• Your signature and a notary acknowledgment