QUESTION
How is an annuity application and its resulting policy valid if an agent e-signed the annuity application without authorization?
Asked on Apr 08th, 2025 on Contracts - Florida
More details to this question:
My mother recently moved her federal savings into a Single Premium Immediate Annuity (SPIA) account, believing it was a retirement account. We later found that the agent electronically signed her name on the annuity application without her knowledge or consent. I've informed the agent via email and a recorded Zoom call that he wasn't authorized to sign for her and requested a refund. The agent stated a cancellation requires my mother’s signature and letter, despite her not authorizing or signing the original application. How can this annuity application be considered valid without her authorization, and how would her signature on a cancellation letter cancel something she never authorized?
1 ANSWER
Consumer Debt Collector Harassment & Abuse Attorney serving Tampa, FL
Partner at
Tischhauser Law Group
2 Awards
No way to answer this in an internet blurb. You mother will need to hire a lawyer to address this directly. As a general rule, with electronic signatures, a later refutation by a family member is not going to get far - quite simply because elderly people make such transactions routinely and its equally routine that later, when family members find out and disagree with the elders decision, they level all kinds of claims of lack or permission, lack of authority, lack of capacity etc and it becomes a significant and often difficult to prove squabble if there is a controversy.
Answered on Apr 10th, 2025 at 2:00 PM
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