Picture a loved one in the final hours of her life. Someone close to her—someone she trusted enough to name as her agent under a durable power of attorney—rushes to change the beneficiary on her annuity. The paperwork gets faxed. The power of attorney gets attached. On the surface it looks like a routine beneficiary change. But buried in the Texas Estates Code is a rule that can unravel the whole thing: an agent acting under a power of attorney generally cannot name himself as a beneficiary, no matter how the paperwork is dressed up.
This is not a hypothetical. It comes up regularly in Texas probate and estate disputes, usually because families—and sometimes even their advisors—overlook the specific limits that apply when an agent, rather than the principal herself, submits a beneficiary change. The stakes are high. Non-probate assets like annuities and life insurance pass outside the will entirely. Whoever is named beneficiary gets the money, period. When an agent with a power of attorney tries to insert himself into that equation, the Texas Estates Code has something to say about it.
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America v. Kreiner, Civil Action No. 4:25-cv-765 (E.D. Tex. Apr. 22, 2026), takes a close look at exactly this issue. The court had to decide whether an agent who used a power of attorney to name himself a beneficiary on the day the principal died could actually pull that off. The answer maps out what an agent can and cannot do when changing beneficiary designations under a power of attorney.
Facts & Procedural History
Kristin Lyon executed a life insurance annuity (the “Annuity”) in June 2022. She died on August 3, 2024, at 1:23 in the afternoon. Before and around the time of her death, two competing beneficiary change requests landed at the insurance company, each naming a completely different group of people.
The first request, dated March 14, 2024, appeared to bear Kristin’s own signature and named three of her relatives (the “Lyon Defendants”)—Steve Lyon, Anna Lyon, and Bonnie Lindsly. The second request, dated August 3, 2024, was submitted on the very day Kristin died. It came not from Kristin but from Patrick Kreiner, her agent under a Statutory Durable Power of Attorney (the “Power of Attorney”). Patrick used that Power of Attorney to name himself and three of his relatives (the “Kreiner Defendants”) as the new primary beneficiaries.
Caught between two sets of claimants, the insurance company filed an interpleader action in federal court and asked the court to decide who was entitled to the proceeds. It deposited the funds into the court’s registry, recovered its fees, and was dismissed. That left the Lyon side and the Kreiner side to fight it out—the kind of dispute that falls squarely into probate litigation, where competing claims to estate or non-probate assets have to be sorted out by a judge.
The Lyon Defendants moved for partial summary judgment on three grounds: (1) the August 3 request came in after Kristin died, so the Power of Attorney had already ended; (2) even if it was timely, the Power of Attorney did not expressly authorize Patrick to change beneficiary designations; and (3) even if it did, Patrick could not lawfully name himself. The court denied the motion. Its treatment of that third argument is the part worth studying.
What Does the Texas Estates Code Say About Powers of Attorney?
Chapter 751 of the Texas Estates Code sets out the general framework for durable powers of attorney. A durable power of attorney is a written instrument that gives an agent—also called an attorney-in-fact—authority to act for the principal in legal and financial matters. The word “durable” matters: unlike an ordinary power of attorney, a durable one survives the principal’s incapacity. That is why these instruments are so common in estate planning. They let a trusted person handle finances even if the principal can no longer act.
Chapter 752 then defines the categories of authority a durable power of attorney can grant—real estate, banking, investments, business operations, and insurance and annuity transactions, among others. When the instrument incorporates the authority under Subchapter C of Chapter 752, the agent steps into a broad set of financial shoes. But the code is not a blank check. Some powers come with express statutory limits, and those limits exist for a reason.
The reason is that the agent is a fiduciary. An agent owes the principal good faith, loyalty, and full accountability, because the agent is using power that belongs to the principal. The moment an agent starts using that power to benefit himself instead of the principal, the law gets suspicious. That concern is not abstract—it is exactly why the Texas Estates Code limits an agent’s ability to name himself as a beneficiary of insurance and annuity contracts.
Does a Power of Attorney Automatically Authorize Beneficiary Changes?
Not necessarily. The code draws a line between general authority and express authority for certain acts. Under Texas Estates Code Section 751.031(b)(4), an agent may create or change a beneficiary designation “only if the durable power of attorney designating the agent expressly grants the agent the authority and the exercise of the authority is not otherwise prohibited by another agreement or instrument to which the authority or property is subject.”
The word “expressly” does real work. A power of attorney that grants general authority over financial matters does not, by itself, authorize beneficiary changes. The instrument has to say so specifically, or it has to incorporate a Texas Estates Code provision that does.
In Allianz, the Power of Attorney granted Patrick the general authority under Subchapter C of Chapter 752. That subchapter includes Section 752.108, which covers insurance and annuity transactions. Section 752.108(a)(10) says the authority over these transactions “empowers the attorney in fact or agent to change the beneficiary of an insurance contract or annuity.” Because the Power of Attorney incorporated Subchapter C, Patrick did have authority to submit a beneficiary change on Kristin’s behalf. The Lyon Defendants’ second argument failed.
But that does not end things. A separate, more targeted restriction kicks in the moment the agent tries to name himself.
The Rule That Stops an Agent From Naming Himself
Section 752.108(a)(10) carries a critical carve-out. An agent can change the beneficiary of an annuity, “except that the attorney in fact or agent may be designated a beneficiary only to the extent authorized by [Section 752.108(b)].” Subsection (b) then provides that unless the principal expressly granted the authority to create or change a beneficiary designation, “an agent may be named a beneficiary of an insurance contract or an extension, renewal, or substitute for the contract only to the extent the agent was named as a beneficiary by the principal.”
Read those two subsections together and the rule is simple. An agent using a power of attorney can submit a beneficiary change and can name new beneficiaries. What the agent cannot do is name himself—unless one of two things is true. Either the principal expressly authorized the agent to do so in the power of attorney, or the principal had already named the agent as a beneficiary on the policy.
The point of the rule is accountability. An agent who names himself the beneficiary of a principal’s annuity is using the principal’s own legal authority to move money to himself. That is the textbook self-dealing fiduciary law exists to prevent, and the Texas Estates Code does not leave the protection to common law—it writes the limit into the statute.
Patrick ran into both problems. The Power of Attorney did not expressly grant him authority to name himself. And Kristin had not previously named him a beneficiary—just the opposite. The earlier March 14 request, purportedly signed by Kristin herself, named an entirely different group of people.
Can Fairness or “Substantial Compliance” Save the Designation?
The Kreiner Defendants tried two ways around the rule. First, they leaned on Texas common law about fiduciary duties. They cited Vogt v. Warnock, 107 S.W.3d 778 (Tex. App.—El Paso 2003, pet. denied), and Chien v. Chen, 759 S.W.2d 484 (Tex. App.—Austin 1988, no writ), for the idea that self-dealing by an agent is not automatically void. It is presumptively fraudulent, which shifts the burden to the agent to show the transaction was fair and consistent with the principal’s intent. So, they argued, if Patrick could show the designation matched what Kristin wanted, it should stand.
The court turned that down for a good reason. Neither Vogt nor Chien dealt with the specific limit in Section 752.108(b). Those cases addressed the general fiduciary-duty framework; they said nothing about the code’s targeted restriction on self-designations in the insurance and annuity context. When a specific statute governs a specific transaction, the statute controls. The court refused to read Kristin’s probated will to guess her intent and then use that guess to override a statutory limit on a non-probate asset. Doing that, the court said, “would be especially dangerous when considering that the determination of proper beneficiary designations will affect the distribution of the Interpleaded Funds—proceeds from a non-probate asset.”
That reflects a basic rule of Texas probate and estate law: non-probate assets run on their own track. A will does not control an annuity beneficiary designation. Even crystal-clear testamentary intent does not override the statutory framework for how beneficiary changes have to be made.
The Kreiner Defendants’ second try was “substantial compliance.” Even if the self-designation was improper, they argued, Patrick had substantially complied with the annuity’s requirements—there was a valid power of attorney, an executed form, a confirmed transmission, and a probated will with matching allocations. Texas does recognize substantial compliance in the beneficiary context. The classic statement comes from Tips v. Security Life & Accident Co., 191 S.W.2d 470 (Tex. 1945): a change is effective when the insured has substantially complied with the policy’s method or “done all that [they] could reasonably have done to perfect a change.” Courts usually apply it when the insurer has not yet received or processed a change before the policyholder dies.
The court declined to stretch it here. Two things sank the argument. The Kreiner Defendants never identified the specific annuity provisions they supposedly complied with. And more importantly, substantial compliance is built around an insurer’s own procedural requirements—it is not a workaround for a limit written into the Texas Estates Code. Using an equitable doctrine to erase an express statutory command would flip the relationship between equity and statute. Courts use equity to fill gaps, not to override the words of a statute.
An Agent Can Still Name Others—Just Not Himself
One of the more careful moves in Allianz is how the court parsed what Patrick could and could not do. It did not hold that the entire August 3 request was void because of the self-designation. Instead it followed the Western District of Texas in Transamerica Life Insurance Co. v. Quarm, No. EP-16-CV-295-KC, 2017 WL 5476471 (W.D. Tex. Nov. 13, 2017), which dealt with nearly the same facts: a son acting under his mother’s power of attorney submitted a change naming himself. Transamerica held that Section 752.108(b) bars an agent from naming himself, but that limit reaches only the self-designation—not the rest of the change. As that court put it: “While the statute prohibits [the decedent’s son] from appointing himself as beneficiary, it authorizes him to remove existing beneficiaries and designate new ones other than himself.”
The Allianz court applied the same reading. If the August 3 request was timely, Patrick was authorized to change the primary beneficiaries to the other Kreiner Defendants—Thomas, Timothy, and Jerome—but not to himself. His own designation was barred by statute; the others could stand. In other words, a partial fix: strike the agent’s self-designation, leave the rest potentially valid.
That distinction matters for anyone handling probate administration or advising on beneficiary designations. An agent under a power of attorney can lawfully redirect proceeds to third parties, even family members—but cannot slip himself into the beneficiary line without prior authorization from the principal.
The Unresolved Issue: Did the Fax Beat the Clock?
In the end, the court denied summary judgment on a timing dispute that created a genuine fact issue. Patrick sent the August 3 request the same day Kristin died. Whether the fax went out before or after her death at 1:23 p.m. was never settled.
The Lyon Defendants produced a fax header showing transmission at 4:18 p.m.—after the death. The Kreiner Defendants produced a different version of the same fax, with a cover page showing 11:22 a.m.—before the death. The two copies had noticeable differences: the Lyon version had page-by-page headers and Bates numbering from the insurer’s production; the Kreiner version had neither but included a detailed cover page with the earlier timestamp. The court read those differences to mean the parties were working from different copies—one from the insurer’s files, one Patrick kept as the sender.
Why the timing is everything: under Texas Estates Code Section 751.131, a durable power of attorney terminates when the principal dies. An agent cannot act under it for a dead principal. So if the fax went out at 4:18 p.m., the Power of Attorney had already ended and the August 3 request was invalid no matter what authority it claimed. If it went out at 11:22 a.m., the Power of Attorney was still live, and the self-designation problem becomes the controlling issue. Because that fact could not be resolved on summary judgment, the case stayed alive.
The Takeaway
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America v. Kreiner shows just how narrow an agent’s authority is when it comes to annuity beneficiary changes. The Texas Estates Code does not treat this as a minor procedural detail. Section 752.108(b) draws a hard line: an agent cannot name himself the beneficiary of a principal’s annuity unless the principal expressly authorized it in the power of attorney or had already named the agent. Common-law fairness arguments and equitable doctrines like substantial compliance do not get around that line. The practical lesson is simple. An agent under a power of attorney has broad authority to manage an annuity, but using that authority to benefit himself crosses a statutory line—and courts will strike the self-designation while leaving legitimate changes in place. If you have been named an agent under a loved one’s power of attorney, or you are drafting one for a client, look hard at whether the instrument contains the express authorization needed to avoid exactly this kind of fight.
Do you need help with a probate matter in Austin or the surrounding area? We are Austin probate attorneys. We help clients work through the probate process. Call today for a free confidential consultation, 512-273-7444.
Our Austin Probate Attorneys provide a full range of probate services to our clients, including helping with disputes over annuity and life insurance beneficiary designations made under a power of attorney. Affordable rates, fixed fees, and payment plans are available. We provide step-by-step instructions, guidance, checklists, and more for completing the probate process. We have years of combined experience that we can use to support and guide you with probate and estate matters. Call us today for a FREE attorney consultation.
Disclaimer
The content of this website is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. The information presented may not apply to your situation and should not be acted upon without consulting a qualified probate attorney. We encourage you to seek the advice of a competent attorney with any legal questions you may have.
