5 records
Does my state require a financial (durable) power of attorney to be notarized, witnessed, or both?
5 records, one fact each. Every value is transcribed from the source that states it and carries the sentence it was taken from: 5 sources across 5 sites, last checked 2026-09-02, due for re-check by 2028-09-01. Every record is listed below, each linking the page its value came from.
About this data
A power of attorney signed without the formalities its own state requires has no legal effect — and those formalities are not uniform: some states accept a notary acknowledgment on its own, some accept either a notary or a set number of witnesses, and some require both. A widely used free guide (last10legal.com's 'Power of Attorney Requirements by State') covers all 50 states in one table, but the page cites zero statute sections anywhere on it — fetched and counted directly on 2026-09-02, the section symbol appears nowhere on the page — so no row on it can be checked against the law it states. Two of the five states here show why that matters: the guide's narrative says Florida requires 'only a notary acknowledgment' while its own table two screens below says '2 witnesses + notary' (the table is the one that matches Fla. Stat. § 709.2105(2)), and it lists Ohio as 'Notary', though Ohio Rev. Code § 1337.25 requires nothing but the principal's signature and makes notarisation the way to earn a presumption that the signature is genuine. This asset states each state's execution requirement against the actual statute, quoted verbatim, so every row can be checked. Every record here is the FINANCIAL (general/durable) power of attorney, not a healthcare power of attorney or advance directive, which most states govern under a different statute with different and usually stricter formalities: Ohio, for example, requires nothing but the principal's signature for a financial POA under Ohio Rev. Code § 1337.25, while § 1337.12 requires a healthcare POA to be either witnessed by two qualifying individuals or notarised. Answers 'do I need a notary for a power of attorney in my state', 'how many witnesses does a power of attorney need', 'is a power of attorney valid without witnesses'.
The data
| State | Execution requirement | Statute |
|---|---|---|
| California | The power of attorney is either (1) acknowledged before a notary public or (2) signed by at least two witnesses who satisfy the requirements of Section 4122 | Cal. Prob. Code § 4121 |
| Florida | signed by the principal and by two subscribing witnesses and be acknowledged by the principal before a notary public | Fla. Stat. § 709.2105 |
| Ohio | A power of attorney must be signed by the principal or in the principal's conscious presence by another individual directed by the principal to sign the principal's name on the power of attorney. A signature on a power of attorney is presumed to be genuine if the principal acknowledges the signature before a notary public | Ohio Rev. Code § 1337.25 |
| South Carolina | (2) attested with the same formality and with the same requirements as to witnesses as a will in South Carolina; and (3) acknowledged or proved pursuant to Section 30-5-30 | S.C. Code § 62-8-105 |
| Texas | (4) is acknowledged by the principal or another adult directed by the principal as authorized by Subdivision (2) before an officer authorized under the laws of this state or another state to: (A) take acknowledgments to deeds of conveyance; and (B) administer oaths | Tex. Est. Code § 751.0021 |
Where this came from
Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 5 sources this dataset was assembled from.
- leginfo.legislature.ca.govhttps://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?sectionNum=4121.&lawCode=PROB
- flsenate.govhttps://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/709.2105
- codes.ohio.govhttps://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-1337.25
- scstatehouse.govhttps://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t62c008.php
- codes.findlaw.comhttps://codes.findlaw.com/tx/estates-code/est-sect-751-0021/
Machine-readable
- data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
- Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
- data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
- How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.
Set your AI assistant up to use this
Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.
{
"mcpServers": {
"referencesource": {
"type": "http",
"url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
}
}
}Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project
Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:
When a question needs "Financial power of attorney execution requirements by US state — notary, witnesses, or both, quoted from the state's own statute", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `power-of-attorney-execution-requirements-by-state`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.