Can a Power of Attorney Change a Will?

An agent under a Florida power of attorney may exercise only the authority the document specifically grants, and Florida lists a few acts no document can grant at all. Executing or revoking a will or codicil for the principal is one of them. The principal is the person who signed the power of attorney, and the will remains the principal’s alone.

1. Can a Power of Attorney Change or Override a Will?

A Florida power of attorney cannot change, revoke or override a will. The statute bars an agent from executing or revoking any will or codicil for the principal, whatever the document says, and it bars the agent from exercising powers the principal holds as a trustee or as a court-appointed fiduciary. A Florida will must be signed at the end by the person making it, or by someone else in that person’s presence and at that person’s direction, in front of two witnesses. The second route is the testator acting through another hand, and it gives an agent no authority of its own. Our guide to writing a will in Florida covers the signing.

What an agent can change is what the will has left to give. A will controls only property in the principal’s own name at death. An agent who sells the house the will leaves to a daughter, or spends down the account the will leaves to a son, changes the result without touching the will. Florida has a statute protecting the person named for a specific item when a guardian sells it, giving that person a cash gift equal to the net sale price. The statute names a guardian and does not mention an agent under a power of attorney, and I have not found a Florida appellate opinion applying it to an agent’s sale. A will written while the owner is well, and a power of attorney that tells the agent which assets to sell last, are the practical answer.

A power of attorney also ends at death, so an agent has no authority to do anything with a will afterward. The will is carried out by the personal representative through probate, and our page on a power of attorney after death covers that handoff.

2. Can a Power of Attorney Change a Trust?

An agent can change a Florida trust only with two separate permissions. The principal must have signed or initialed next to the specific power to amend, modify, revoke or terminate a trust, and the trust document itself must explicitly allow the settlor’s agent to do so. The Florida trust code says the same thing from the trust’s side, allowing an agent to exercise the settlor’s powers to revoke, amend or distribute trust property only as the power of attorney statute permits. Our page on revoking or amending a Florida trust covers the settlor’s own methods.

Creating a new trust is a separate power that also needs its own initial. Moving the principal’s assets into a trust the principal already signed is ordinary funding, and a well-drafted power of attorney grants it expressly so a revocable living trust can still be funded after the owner loses capacity.

3. Can a Power of Attorney Change a Beneficiary?

An agent can change a beneficiary designation only if the principal initialed next to that specific power. The same rule covers creating or changing survivorship rights on a joint account or a deed, and waiving a spouse’s survivor benefit under an annuity or retirement plan. A form that lists those powers in one paragraph with a single signature grants none of them.

Florida draws a line between changing a beneficiary and using the account. An agent with banking or investment authority can deposit to and withdraw from a payable-on-death account, a joint account, an IRA or an insurance policy, and the withdrawal is not treated as a change to the beneficiary designation. The bank has no duty to ask why. The agent’s duties to the principal still apply to every withdrawal. Our page on Florida beneficiary designations covers how those accounts pass at death.

An agent who is not the principal’s spouse, parent, grandparent, child or grandchild cannot use any of these powers to create an interest for himself or for someone he is legally obliged to support, unless the power of attorney expressly allows it.

4. Can a Power of Attorney Make Gifts?

An agent can make gifts only with the separately initialed gift power. Unless the document provides more, the gift power lets the agent give each person no more than the federal annual gift tax exclusion in a calendar year, which is $19,000 in 2026, or $38,000 where the principal’s spouse agrees to split the gift. Larger gifts, such as the transfers a Medicaid plan sometimes needs, require language in the document that expressly allows them.

A family agent is not free to give to himself just because the self-benefit rule spares spouses and descendants. Every agent must act in good faith, within the authority granted, not contrary to the principal’s best interest, and not contrary to the principal’s reasonable expectations actually known to the agent. A son who gives himself $19,000 a year from his mother’s savings while she needs the money for care is breaking those duties, initialed power or not. Our page on power of attorney abuse in Florida covers what happens next.

5. Does an Agent Have to Follow the Estate Plan?

A Florida agent must attempt to preserve the principal’s estate plan, to the extent the agent actually knows it, when preserving it is consistent with the principal’s best interest. Florida tells the agent to weigh the value and nature of the property, the principal’s foreseeable obligations and need for support, minimizing taxes, eligibility for benefits such as Medicaid, and the principal’s own history of making gifts. The duty runs to the principal. An agent who acts in good faith is not liable to a beneficiary of the plan for failing to preserve it.

An agent must also keep a record of every receipt, payment and transaction. Florida does not require the agent to hand those records to the family, and it does require production within 60 days when requested by the principal, a guardian, another fiduciary, a protective agency, or after death the personal representative. A family worried about an agent’s choices usually starts with that request.

6. What Can a Family Do if an Agent Changed the Plan?

A Florida court can review an agent’s conduct, end the agent’s authority, remove the agent and grant other relief, and it awards reasonable attorney fees and costs in that proceeding. Where an agent’s act is challenged as a conflict of interest and the evidence shows the agent or a relative of the agent had a personal interest in it, the agent has to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the act was solely in the principal’s interest, or was in good faith and expressly authorized in the document. An agent who violates the statute must restore the principal’s property to what it would have been, and repay the principal’s money spent defending the agent.

After the principal’s death the claim belongs to the estate, and the personal representative brings it. A dispute over an agent’s changes is litigation, which we quote per matter. Our Florida probate litigation page covers the court side, and our guide on revoking a power of attorney covers stopping an agent while the principal can still act.

What Does It Cost to Coordinate a Power of Attorney With a Will?

A durable power of attorney is a flat fee from $350, and a Florida will is a flat fee of $299. The Secure Will Estate Plan, a flat fee from $1,200 ($1,950 for a couple), signs the will, the power of attorney, the health care surrogate, the living will and the HIPAA authorization together, plus a lady bird deed on your home, so the agent’s powers and the will are written to fit each other. Recording and other government costs are additional and passed through at cost. Advertised fees are honored for 90 days from the posted date. Our guide on giving someone power of attorney in Florida covers the signing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Common Situations

The house that paid for the care. A mother’s will leaves her Coral Springs condominium to her daughter and her savings to her son. Her son, as agent, sells the condominium to pay for memory care, and the savings are untouched at her death. The will is unchanged, and the daughter receives nothing from it. A clause in the power of attorney telling the agent which assets to sell first would have protected the balance the mother intended.

The IRA beneficiary form. A father’s IRA names his late wife and no contingent beneficiary. His daughter, as agent, wants to name herself and her brother equally. His power of attorney carries his initial next to the beneficiary power, so she can make the change, and she makes it to match the equal split in his will.

Sources of Law

• Fla. Stat. §709.2201(1) (only specifically granted authority); §709.2201(3)(d)-(e) (an agent may not execute or revoke a will or codicil, or exercise powers held as trustee or court-appointed fiduciary); §709.2201(2)(b) (conveying homestead; joinder of a married principal’s spouse); §709.2201(6) (an agent’s act binds the principal); §709.2109(1)(a) (termination at death).
• Fla. Stat. §709.2202(1) (the seven separately initialed powers, including creating a trust, amending a trust only where the trust explicitly allows it, gifts, survivorship, beneficiary designations, survivor annuity waivers and disclaimers); §709.2202(3) (limit on self-benefit by an agent who is not an ancestor, spouse or descendant); §709.2202(4) (gifts capped at the annual exclusion, or twice it with gift splitting); §709.2202(5) (deposits to and withdrawals from survivorship and payable-on-death accounts are not changes to the designation); Fla. Stat. §736.0602(5) (settlor’s powers exercisable by an agent only as §709.2202 authorizes).
• Fla. Stat. §709.2114(1)(a)4. (duty to attempt to preserve the estate plan and the factors); §709.2114(3) (no liability to beneficiaries for good-faith failure to preserve); §709.2114(6) (records produced within 60 days on request); §709.2116(3)-(4) (fees; clear and convincing burden on a conflicted agent); §709.2117 (agent’s liability). flsenate.gov, retrieved October 1, 2026.
• Fla. Stat. §732.502(1)(a) (testator’s signature, or signature by another in the testator’s presence and at the testator’s direction); §732.606(1) (a specific devisee receives the net sale price when a guardian of the property sells the devised property); §733.304 (nonresident personal representatives). Rev. Proc. 2025-32 (2026 annual exclusion of $19,000).
• Case retold below: Gurfinkel v. Josi, 972 So. 2d 927 (Fla. 3d DCA 2007), decided under former Fla. Stat. §709.08. Opinion read in full; retrieved October 1, 2026.

The Agent Who Rewrote a Trust

I walk owners through the trust and the power of attorney side by side, because the gap between the two documents is where a plan gets rewritten by someone other than the person who made it.

A Florida appeals court decision from 2007 shows how that happens. In 1998 a mother signed a revocable trust naming her husband as trustee. The main asset was 25 shares of a family company, and the trust said the shares would go to her daughter when the mother died. The same day, she signed a durable power of attorney naming her husband as her agent. In April 2000, acting as her agent, he signed an amendment taking the shares out of the trust and then transferred them to their son. The husband became incapacitated in 2001, and the three children took over as co-trustees. After the mother died in December 2003, the daughter and one brother, as co-trustees, challenged the amendment against the brother who received the shares. The trial court approved the amendment. The appeals court reversed, because the trust reserved the power to amend to the mother alone and barred anyone else from using it, and the power of attorney at most let her husband put property into the trust.

Reading that case alongside today’s chapter 709, I have a few take-home points.

The first is that the trust spoke for the mother. Her trust said in plain words that no one but her could exercise her reserved rights, and that one sentence decided the case years after she could no longer explain herself. Florida now builds the same protection into the statute, since an agent can amend a trust only where the trust explicitly allows it and the principal initialed that power.

The second is the person in both seats. Her husband was trustee and agent at once, and he used the agent’s pen on the trustee’s document. Avoid naming the same person to hold both jobs without deciding, in writing, whether that person may change the trust. If the answer is no, the trust and the power of attorney should both say so.

The third is the shares. The fight was over stock in a family company, which is the asset most likely to be moved during an owner’s decline because someone in the family runs the business. An owner whose plan leaves a business interest to one child should say in the power of attorney that the agent may not transfer it. A durable power of attorney coordinated with the trust is a flat fee from $350, and a dispute over an agent’s changes is litigation, which I quote per matter.

An honest limit applies. The appeals court reversed and sent the case back, and the opinion does not say whether the shares were returned or what they were worth. The decision also came under the statute Florida replaced in 2011, although the current law points the same way.

Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., admitted in Florida since 2012. Each case described above is a decision of a Florida court rather than a matter handled by this firm. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.

Updated on October 1, 2026. Reviewed by Kevin D. Klagge, Esq., Fla. Bar No. 99502. Attorney Kevin Klagge represents families, businesses, and international clients in estate and tax planning, business structuring, and international law, with a focus on Florida legal tools. He litigates estate and business issues in court. General information about Florida law, not legal advice, and no attorney-client relationship is created. Do not send confidential information until we have agreed to represent you.