Why naming co-agents in your power of attorney backfires

“It is better to have one bad general in charge than two good ones.”
– Napoleon

In Arizona, you may name multiple agents to act on your behalf under a single durable medical power of attorney. However, it is generally advisable not to go down this route. This is because with multiple agents in charge, there is a likelihood of conflict.

Multiple agents are all authorized to make choices about your end-of-life decisions. Whose idea is this? Four years ago, I wrote a blog post, “Two Heads Are Not Always Better Than One,” about the ill-conceived notion of naming more than one person as a primary agent in your durable health care power of attorney (POA) or advance directive. Is there any wisdom in naming two or three people as co-agents in your POA? There are no good reasons for this practice, but many bad ones, even though people are confident their children would be perfect candidates for the co-agent roles. The proverb “two heads are better than one” does not apply here, as most professionals consider having more than one primary health care agent a very bad idea. I have not read or heard anything that suggests otherwise. When you are incapacitated, the last thing you need is a debate, read: fight, about treatment or living options among your agents or loved ones.

In my recent experience, here is how choosing poorly can go horribly wrong. This is the first clause in the wife of my client’s DHC-POA:

DHC-POA Clause 1, Co-Agents: “It is my intention that each co-agent may act individually, as if he or she were a sole agent.”

The attorney who drafted this POA works for a highly respected family and estate law firm. After multiple problems arose, I asked him what he was thinking when drafting the POA naming three “sole or co-agents,” and he said he thought that the parties would all get along because, during the meeting with the son, daughter, my client, and his wife, it seemed they all wanted the same thing: a safe memory care facility for the wife who suffered from dementia. After the POA was signed, I became the patient advocate for the 89-year-old husband who shared his wife’s POA with his two adult children. The children are his wife’s stepchildren. He lives independently in an over-55 community in Arizona.

After the POA was drafted, at the end of January 2026, his wife was placed in a memory care facility. However, the facility was ten miles from her husband’s home. Although that may seem close, he does not drive and must pay about $60 per round trip by Uber or cab per visit. As a result, he can see his wife only once or twice a month. When I began working with him, his goal was to move her to a memory care facility closer to home.

My research led us to a wonderful, available facility literally across the street from his home, comparable to the facility where she was living. The new facility is a national leader in memory care and has a team devoted to understanding and educating people about living with dementia. He can walk across the street to visit; they can eat their meals together; they can hold hands and watch TV; they can enroll in dementia and social programs geared to each of their needs. Most importantly, at the end of the day, he can kiss her goodnight and walk back to his home. This is a couple who have been married for less than three years, love each other deeply, and just want to spend their declining years together, as they agreed they would do when they realized she had dementia. It sounds ideal, doesn’t it? Everyone who heard this tale, including her caregivers in both facilities, saw no problem with it. In fact, most agreed that he and his wife would greatly benefit from seeing each other daily, especially as her dementia advanced and her memory faded.

The monkey wrench in this plan is that while the POA agreement said each agent could make independent or joint decisions, in reality, two agents could overrule one. The daughter did not want to move her stepmother, and she put up roadblocks for three months without ever giving a good reason. The stepson went along with his sister, even though he told me he just wanted his father to have a safe place for his stepmom, which my client demonstrated he had. The husband was stymied at every turn. When two of her friends and I went with him to visit her, the stepdaughter told the facility to forbid him from bringing friends or professionals in to see her. At this point, we called the police. After carefully reading the document, the police sergeant agreed that, according to the POA, the husband also had the right to call the shots and to see his wife. But his daughter could control who the wife could see while she was in that facility because the daughter was the one who signed the contract. What a mess. As usual, there is more to the story around family dysfunction and control.

See how this POA created a monster?

That day, we met on the facility’s porch, because we were barred from going inside, and the policeman talked to everyone, even the stepdaughter, by phone. He said the POA gave the husband the right to remove his wife from the facility and transfer her to another one. By this point, the husband had put down a deposit and enrolled his wife in the new place. He was trying to arrange for her hospice to transfer her to the new facility, but the daughter would not let the hospice doctor sign the transfer papers. Even if he could do the transfer, the daughter could have done the same thing and reversed course, so he wasn’t sure what would happen. There was a lot of unnecessary angst here. The wife just wanted to be with her husband, even with dementia; she was clear about that. In the end, the daughter relented, and the transfer to the new facility was relatively smooth. The couple will live together happily ever after. Well, not quite; the wife still has dementia, but at least they can be together for part of every day.

What is the lesson here?

Medical teams and care facilities need answers and don’t have time to locate two or more agents, or, as in this case, to wade through family disputes or serve as referees among family members. The best practice is to choose two or even three people, naming one as the primary and designating the others as alternates #1 and #2. This process will help ensure that one person, not all agents together or two overruling one, will carry out your treatment goals. This choice will help ensure that your end-of-life wishes are honored without unnecessary bedside conflict, confusion, or angst. If someone, even a respected lawyer, suggests you agree to be a co-agent, politely disagree and tell this cautionary tale.

Althea Halchuck is a patient advocate.