Corrective Legislation for Powers of Attorney and Confessions of Judgment is now law!

11/1/2016 | Commercial Litigation Blog

Back in 2014, the Pennsylvania General Assembly amended a portion of the Probate, Estates and Fiduciaries Code to revise the requirements for Powers of Attorney.  Governor Corbett signed it on July 2, 2014, and it became Act 95 of 2014.

Unfortunately, Act 95 contained a typographical error in a cross-reference which — if read literally — would have created a potentially serious obstacle for any commercial lender wishing to enforce a Warrant of Attorney to confess judgment contained in commercial loan documents.

Because most of Act 95 took effect on January 1, 2015, the error wasn’t discovered immediately.  On March 2, 2015, a bill to correct the error was introduced.  it passed the House quickly, and was sent to the Senate on April 21, 2015.

There it sat, for more than sixteen months.

Finally, on September 26, 2016, the corrective legislation came up for a vote, passed, and was sent to Governor Wolf, who signed it into law as Act 103 of 2016, on October 4, 2016.

The corrective legislation is retroactive to January 1, 2015, so the original error caused no lasting damage.

This was one of those silly mistakes that anyone could make.  The original statute contained an internal reference to subsection (b)(3)(ii) that should have referred to subsection (b)(3).

There are two points to this post.  First, ALWAYS triple-check everything, even if you are under the gun with a deadline.  Have someone else look it over, too.  It’s easier to get it right than to get it fixed.

Second, it took about a year and a half for the Honorables to fix an obvious typo. 

Good thing it wasn’t a death penalty statute.

Bill