In fact, you could appoint just about anyone (in legal age) as your attorney-in-fact. The appointment and authorization should be clearly stated in the legal document (a power of attorney is actually a legally effective document). How is the power of attorney created? You need to completely fill out a specific power of attorney form. It is important that the person be able to spend much time to handle your affairs and work on your behalf. If not, you would be in trouble. Is the person easily available? Appoint an agent or attorney-in-fact who is easily accessible or available. This is to make sure he/she would always be there in cases of emergency. While the health care agent would be overseeing the principal s medical decisions. The attorney-in-fact or the agent does not have to be lawyer. H/she could be a relative, a daughter or son and even a trusted friend. When picking out an agent, make sure that the person would stand by the principal s beliefs since they would act on behalf of the person. it would only be valid, if there are doctor or doctors which identified that the principal is indeed incapacitated. However, it may pose some problems since mentally incapacitated is defined subjectively and difficult to determine. So it is not recommended that durable power of attorney would be springing. In case you suddenly get mentally incapacitated while any of the three kinds of power of attorney is in effect, the durability provision of the document would allow the agent to stay as your attorney-in-fact indefinitely. In the durable power of attorney, you are acknowledging the possibility that you could become mentally or totally incompetent because of any accident or illness. That way, you can see the various possibilities before you head over to a lawyer s office. There are many sources of POA forms online these days. You can download a form from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). You may opt to look for a particular POA form for your state on some websites that specialize in legal documents.