On Dec. 15, 2020, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a series of amendments to General Obligation Law §§15-1501 et seq., effective June 13, 2021, which made significant changes to the requirements for statutory powers of attorney in the state of New York. The first of what have been at times humorously referred to as the New York Statutory "Short Form" Power of Attorney was first created in 1948 as an effort to avoid requiring the principal to spell-out in detail the powers that he was granting to his agent and instead permitted a short hand abbreviation of the powers being granted and relied on the full description of the power which could be found in the statute.