Kentucky Power of Attorney

A Kentucky power of attorney for real property hands one named agent the authority to act for the owner of one described parcel, through a single sentence that Kentucky law treats as if the whole real property statute were written into the document. This form prepares that instrument under the Kentucky Uniform Power of Attorney Act (2006), KRS Chapter 457, for one principal and one agent, with an optional successor agent, drawn for recording with the county clerk under KRS 382.370.

One parcel, the whole real property section

Kentucky's act works by reference. Under KRS 457.255, a power of attorney that refers to general authority with respect to real property, or that cites KRS 457.270, incorporates that entire section as if it were set out in full, and the principal may modify the authority so incorporated. KRS 457.270 is a long list: buying, selling, conveying, quitclaiming, mortgaging, releasing a lien, leasing, partitioning, subdividing, granting options, insuring, paying taxes, making repairs, and changing the form of title. The grant in this form invokes that section by name and by descriptive term, then confines it to the one property the instrument describes by county, legal description, and street address; the agent, or attorney-in-fact, receives the full section for that parcel and nothing for any other.

Durable, and effective the day it is signed

Two Kentucky defaults are stated on the face of the instrument. KRS 457.040 makes a power of attorney under the chapter durable unless it expressly says it ends on the principal's incapacity, and KRS 457.090 makes it effective when executed unless the principal provides otherwise. The form says both. What ends it is KRS 457.100: the principal's death, revocation, a court's appointment of a conservator or guardian over the principal's estate unless the court provides otherwise, and, as to the agent alone, a filed action to dissolve the agent's marriage to the principal. The successor agent section follows KRS 457.110: the successor acts if the first agent resigns, dies, becomes incapacitated, is not qualified, or declines, with the same authority.

Why the county clerk records it

Recording matters because of what the agent will sign. Under KRS 382.370, where a conveyance made under a power must be recorded to be valid against creditors and purchasers, the power itself must be lodged or recorded in like manner. The Fayette County Clerk describes the practice: the power of attorney is filed with the deed or mortgage the agent signs, or is already of record in that county, and the deed cites the book and page where the power is recorded. The same section makes revocation a recorded act: a recorded power is not deemed revoked until a written, acknowledged revocation is lodged in the same office or a memorandum is entered on the margin of the record, and that revocation is a separate instrument, prepared and recorded separately and not included in this package.

Execution follows KRS 457.050 as amended in 2020: the principal signs, and the signature is presumed genuine when the principal acknowledges it before a notary public. No witnesses appear in the current statute, and none appear on the form. The certificate carries the KRS 423.160 statutory short form and the commission lines KRS 423.360 calls for, and the page layout keeps the three inch first-page margin the county clerks' recording standard reserves for the clerk's stamp.

What the grant leaves out

Kentucky reserves certain acts to an express grant. KRS 457.245 lists them: making a gift, creating or changing rights of survivorship, creating or changing a beneficiary designation, creating or amending a trust, delegating the agent's authority, and a few others. This instrument states that it grants none of them: the agent can sell, mortgage, or lease the described property but cannot give it away, add a survivorship right to the title, or hand the authority to someone else. It reaches no other subject the chapter covers, and it is not the optional statutory form of KRS 457.420, which spans every subject. The principal's spouse is not a party to it, and a deed the agent signs stands where a deed the principal signs would stand as to that spouse's statutory interest.

The package includes the fillable power of attorney, a completed example filled in for a Fayette County parcel, and the guide that walks through every section, KRS Chapter 457, and recording under KRS 382.370. This description and the guide describe the form and the statutes in general terms; they are not legal advice.