In court, she claimed she thought incapacitated meant "not available."

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=509727

Wife found guilty of draining husband's accounts while he served in Iraq

After only a couple of hours of deliberation, a Ramsey County jury found Dana Kieser guilty on two felony counts of check forgery.

She was accused of forging her husband John's signature, draining his investment accounts, and selling their Maplewood house, while he was serving in Iraq. snip

He gave his wife "power of attorney," before he left for Iraq. He claimed he intended her to use it only if he was incapacitated, or died, in Iraq.

In court, she claimed she thought incapacitated meant "not available." She said her husband knew money would be a problem while he was gone, and that they had spoken about those problems.

[Earth_First]

1. Hmmm...

Call me crazy, but I could almost see this holding water.

[uppityperson]

2. uffda

[LibDemAlways]

3. She must have been pretty desperate for money. Why

was everything so out of reach for her to begin with? Doesn't sound like much of a partnership to me.

[Ghost in the Machine]

4. My 1st wife thought "Insufficient Funds" meant she hadn't spent enough yet..

[dkf]

5. If she had POA, why would she need to forge his signature?

Forgery is forgery, and has nothing to do with having a power of attorney.

[Solon]

6. I believe power of attorney only kicks in if the other party isn't capable of making decisions...

due to illness or death. Granted, being his wife, she would have, theoretically, "next of kin" privileges in such situations, but they apparently took it a step further, to prevent any confusion.

[dkf]

8. It depends how the power of attorney reads.

A person can give a power of attorney for any reason they want to. In fact, some power of attorneys become INVALID when a person becomes incapacitated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_of_attorney

"Under the common law, a power of attorney becomes ineffective if its grantor dies or becomes "incapacitated," meaning unable to grant such a power, because of physical injury or mental illness, for example, unless the grantor (or principal) specifies that the power of attorney will continue to be effective even if the grantor becomes incapacitated (but any such power ends when the grantor dies). This type of power of attorney is called a durable power of attorney."

[Solon]

9. Sounds like she broke the "contract" so to speak, of the power of attorney then. n/t

[dkf]

10. If she had to forge a signature, she didn't use the POA.

If she did use the POA, she would have signed her own signature and listed herself as POA.

Seems to me she was trying to use the POA as a defense, but that has nothing to do with it.

[On the Road]

7. I Was a Meeting with a Customer Once,

a lady from a working-class Irish background who managed MCI's fraud department. While discussing another devious instance of telephone fraud, she said "That sounds like something my son would do. But I don't have to worry about now -- he's incapacitated."

Picturing him in a wheelchair, I said "Pam -- what happened to him?" She glared at me as if I were the stupidest person on earth and said "He's...in...PRISON!" (Apparently thinking that "incapacited" meant "incarcerated".)

[Fox Mulder]

11. Yet another proud moment for Minnesota.

:sarcasm: