By Austin Senior Advisor Care Team · October 16, 2026
Getting a Texas power of attorney signed is only the start. Here is what an agent can and cannot do, which document covers money versus medicine, and how to sign an Austin assisted living agreement without risking your own savings.
You have the document. Now you have the job.
Most advice about powers of attorney stops at the signing. A lawyer's office, a notary stamp, a folder that goes into a drawer. That is the easy part. The hard part starts the first time you walk into an Austin assisted living community, a bank branch, or a hospital registration desk and have to prove you are allowed to act.
If you are the person named in your parent's papers, you are called an agent. Texas treats that word seriously. An agent is a fiduciary, which means the law holds you to a standard of loyalty and good faith with someone else's money. Families often learn this after the fact, when a sibling asks to see where the money went.
This guide is about the job, not the paperwork. It covers what the two Texas documents let you do, what each one flatly does not, how to sign an admission agreement without taking on your parent's bill personally, and the records that protect you. It is general information, not legal advice. If you still need to get a document signed while your parent can understand it, read our guardianship walkthrough first, because that is a different problem.
Two documents, two separate jobs
Texas keeps money and medicine in separate boxes. The financial document is the statutory durable power of attorney, laid out in Chapter 752 of the Texas Estates Code. The health document is the medical power of attorney, which sits in Chapter 166 of the Health and Safety Code. Holding one does not give you the other.
The state's own financial form says this directly in its opening notice: the document does not authorize health care decisions. So the person who pays your mother's rent at an Austin memory care community may have no say in her treatment, and the person who signs her consent forms may have no access to her checking account. If your family has only one of the two, that is the first gap to close.
The notice on the financial form also warns that the powers are broad and sweeping, and recommends getting competent legal advice. That is not boilerplate. A financial agent can, depending on what the principal granted, deal with bank accounts, bills, benefits and property. Read the grants. Do not assume you hold every power on the form, because a principal can cross out categories.
When your authority starts, and why it matters at the front desk
The financial form offers two options. Under the first, the power takes effect when it is signed and is not undone by later disability or incapacity. Under the second, it takes effect only upon the principal's disability or incapacity, which a physician must certify in writing at a date after the document was signed. If neither option is crossed out, the form says the first one applies.
That choice shapes your daily life as an agent. A power that starts at signing lets you act the week a bill goes unpaid. A power that waits for a physician's letter means you must first find a doctor willing to write it, and then show that letter to every bank and provider that asks. Families who chose the second option out of caution often discover it is the harder one to use in a crisis.
The medical power of attorney works the other way by design. The agent's authority begins when the patient cannot make health care decisions and a physician certifies that in writing. Until then, your parent decides. If your father can still say what he wants at St. David's or Ascension Seton, you are not the decision-maker yet, and a good case manager will keep asking him, not you.
One practical point on the medical document. It is valid if your parent signed in front of a notary or in front of two qualified adult witnesses. Certain people cannot be witnesses, including the named agent, relatives by blood or marriage, anyone who would inherit from the estate, and the attending physician or that physician's employees. If you were a witness on your own appointment, the document has a problem, so ask the attorney who drafted it to check.
What a fiduciary actually has to do
The statutory form includes a section titled Important Information for Agent. It is short and worth reading in full. It says you must act in good faith, stay within the authority you were given, act loyally for your parent's benefit, and avoid conflicts of interest. It also says you must identify yourself as the agent when you act for your parent, rather than signing as if you were them.
Then comes the record-keeping duty, which is where well-meaning children get hurt. The form says you must keep records of what you do, hold them until you deliver them or are discharged, and provide an accounting if your parent asks. The text also describes liability for violations. You do not need software for this. You need a folder, a separate account for your parent's money, and the habit of saving every receipt.
Do not mix your money with theirs. Do not pay yourself for caregiving unless the document authorizes it and you have talked it through with a lawyer and your siblings. Paying yourself back for what you spent on your parent is a different thing from paying yourself for your time, and both should be written down before the money moves, not after a brother asks questions at the holidays.
Good records also protect your parent. A Medicaid application, which in Texas looks at 60 months of financial history, is far easier when every withdrawal has a paper trail. We cover that rule in the Medicaid look-back guide.
Gifts: the IRS number is not the Medicaid number
The statutory form lets a principal authorize gifts, and it caps what the agent can give any one person at the federal annual gift tax exclusion for the calendar year. For 2026 that exclusion is $19,000 per recipient. Many families read that and conclude they can safely move money to the kids.
Do not. The IRS exclusion is a tax rule. The Medicaid look-back is a separate eligibility rule, and it does not care that a gift stayed under the tax threshold. Texas counts transfers for less than fair market value made in the 60 months before a Medicaid application, then converts them into a period when Medicaid will not pay for long-term care. A gift you were allowed to make as agent can still cost your parent months of coverage.
There is no published Austin-specific figure for how often this happens, and we are not going to invent one. What we can say is that it is a common surprise, and that the right time to ask an elder law attorney is before the first gift, not at the Medicaid interview.
The same caution applies to the house. The form notes that home equity loan documents must be signed at a lender's office, an attorney's office, or a title company. If someone suggests using the power of attorney to quickly put your parent's home in your name, stop and get advice. That move can have tax, Medicaid and estate recovery effects that outlast the family disagreement it was meant to avoid.
Signing the assisted living agreement without owing the bill
Here is a scene that plays out across Austin every week. A community director slides an admission agreement across the desk. There is a line for the resident and a line for the responsible party. You have your power of attorney in your bag. Which line do you sign, and in what capacity?
Sign as agent, and write that you are signing as agent under the power of attorney for your parent. Keep it explicit. If a line asks you to guarantee payment personally, that is a different promise from paying the bill out of your parent's money, and you should not make it by accident.
There is a federal rule that matters here, but only for some places. For Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing facilities, 42 CFR 483.15 says the facility may not require a third-party guarantee of payment as a condition of admission or continued stay. It does allow a facility to ask a representative who has legal access to the resident's money to sign a contract to pay from the resident's funds, without becoming personally liable. We could not confirm an equivalent rule for Texas assisted living, so read that signature block as if no such protection exists.
Have an attorney read the agreement before you sign if you can. Our contract red flags guide lists the clauses that change what a family pays. Add one more question: who does this agreement bind, your parent, you, or both?
Making the papers work in Austin
A document that is legally sound can still be refused by a clerk who has never seen one. Bring the original and several copies. Ask each institution what it needs, and ask early, because banks sometimes have their own forms and review times. A few phone calls before an emergency are worth more than a fight at a teller window during one.
Give your parent's medical power of attorney to the primary care doctor, and ask for it to be scanned into the chart. When your parent is admitted anywhere, bring a copy and ask that it be filed. Do the same with the assisted living community, so the staff know who to call at two in the morning.
Help is local. The Area Agency on Aging of the Capital Area, at 512-916-6062, offers benefits counseling and legal assistance for older adults across Travis, Williamson, Hays and Bastrop counties. Volunteer Legal Services of Central Texas runs advice clinics for people who meet its income and asset guidelines. Family Eldercare, at 512-483-3580, offers money management help for people who need more than a family member can give. If your parent can no longer sign anything, the Travis County probate courts at 200 W. 8th St. in downtown Austin are where guardianship is decided.
If you suspect someone is misusing an older adult's money at home, call Adult Protective Services at 1-800-252-5400. If it is happening inside a licensed facility, the number is HHSC Complaint and Incident Intake at 1-800-458-9858. Our page on reporting abuse explains which to use. Families often call the wrong one and lose days.
What to do this month
Open the documents and read them. Find out which effective-date option the financial power chose, whether the medical document was properly witnessed or notarized, and which powers were granted or crossed out.
Set up a record system today. Use a separate account for your parent's money, one folder for receipts, and a simple log of every payment you make. Tell your siblings where it lives. Openness does more to prevent family conflict than any clause in a legal form.
Then book one hour with a Texas elder law attorney, especially if your parent might apply for Medicaid within five years, if you plan to give any gifts, or if you will sign a contract with a community. Ask what the documents cover, what they do not, and whether anything needs to be redone while your parent can still sign. That hour is cheaper than the problems it prevents.
