Abuses of Power-of-Attorney: HB125

Virginia House Bill #125 raises the penalty for those who abuse the "power-of-attorney." Full text here:

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB125

Criminal justice isn't my main field of interest in this blog, but I'll say this. I've witnessed two outrageous abuses of "power-of-attorney," in which greedheads shamelessly exploited senior citizens who were physically disabled but competent to understand that they were being exploited. Because it's very hard to define in legal terms when a person is or isn't competent--because a lot of healthy people will admit that we're only borderline-competent late at night or early in the morning--it's inherently very easy to take advantage of "power-of-attorney." For all practical purposes, a mean, greedy, or selfish individual can torture an intelligent adult who may have been confused in the recent past but knows exactly what's going on now. It can be hard to stop the process, and efforts to stop the process may cause further harm to someone who is in fact ill. And if you've watched someone use a "power-of-attorney" document (especially one that you know to be fraudulent!) to aggravate the distress of a friend or relative, merely because your friend or relative happens to be old and rich, HB125 speaks for you. You want to stick it to the person who's abused "power-of-attorney."

My belief is that that natural urge to make this kind of scum pay is healthy for society (even if it might be healthier for some of us to avoid thinking about it). If you know someone who is old and rich, and you want very much to retire, such that you could be tempted to do things like calling a doctor to examine a patient immediately after surgery when the patient will be weak and confused, in order to activate your "power-of-attorney" and start transferring the patient's money into your bank account, then you need to know that such a decision will have nasty consequences. If you have a legitimate "power-of-attorney" and could be tempted to use it to feather your own nest by doing things like keeping an ambulatory patient restrained in a hospital bed so he can't spend his own money, or "volunteering" a patient for elective surgery that she doesn't even need so the students at the hospital can practice the operation, then you need to know that you could find yourself living on the street...without a shirt!

On behalf of all Virginians who may someday become old and/or rich, this website hereby thanks Delegate Kilgore for sponsoring HB125.