Tax return question

Have a dilemma here. I recently did my taxes for 2010. I was married at the time, no longer married. Last week the tax return was mailed to my parents house and when they tried to deposit it into my bank but the bank won't allow it because it has my X wife's name on the check as well as mine and I have no joint account with her.

The bank is saying I need give my mother power of attorney, which is no problem, but they are also saying my xwife needs to give my mother power of attorney, major problem. I have had basically no contact with my x since the divorce. All I know is that she is still somewhere in the Philippines.

I know contacting her is possible but could go very badly for me. There has to be another way to get that check in my account. Has anyone else ever ran across the same situation? If so how did you deal with it.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to suck it up, contact my wife and try get her to give my mother a special power of attorney. (I'm really short of ideas on how to go about doing that.) btw: this is not some chump change.

 

Just to clarify this tax return is coming from the US government.

 

Thought of that, bank requires an ID or power of attorney. Her signature on the check is not good enough.

 

I don't understand why the bank will accept a power of attorney with her signature (with no proof of ID) and not the check...........wait, figured it out. Cheers PatO

 

Can a filipino lawyer draw up a power of attorney for the US?

 

Ok. Power of attorney documents drawn up online with legalzoom.

Indiana law states that it must be signed in front of a notary public. However, it does not state that it needs to be an Indiana notary public or even one in the US. Anyone know of a notary here in Dumaguete that I could use for witnessing the signature(s)?

 

Me and my x wife are both Americans so it might be a bit different. I just finished the power of attorney documents for the state of Indiana on legalzoom.com. They are being mailed to my parents house. They will scan them to me and I will take them to a notary here to sign in front of and then scan them back to my parents. Hopefully with the documents being written for the state I plan on depositing the check in it will hold up. If that doesn't work I will do the long drawn out process of actually mailing the documents here and mailing them back. Hopefully the easy way works out this time.

I could see some skepticism from the bank if it was written up by a lawyer here for a power of attorney here (the Philippines isn't exactly known worldwide for their honesty and good moral character and I'm not exactly sure how international law works on power of attorney). It has become harder for me over the last couple years as well though. They used to deposit the return into my account without questioning anything. Perhaps now that the check is much larger than previous years they want to cover all the bases. My mother knows the law/rule now so she would never go to some back alley store to cash it out. She's forcing my hand in doing the right thing.......or so she thinks.