In regards to getting a legal POA for our mom, can 2 siblings be listed with OR and not AND?

Talk to the lawyer, not the assistant.

More than one DPOA is a recipe for disaster. Pick one and if they become unable to serve the other person can step in as secondary.

You can share decisions with your brother if you want to...ask for his input but leave it at that.

I strongly urge you to not do what you are outlining.

Read around this site, many horror stories about doing this.

I think the biggest reason they discourage it is simply because they have seen too many situations where the shared POA doesn't work. If your mother is 100% certain that you and your brother will never disagree about her care, her finances or anything whatsoever about how she wants things done - because ultimately POA is designed to see to things for someone in the way THEY would do them if they could still execute those tasks for themselves - then the shared POA will be acceptable.

I think most lawyers caution people against it because they see instances where one sibling will think Mom/Dad needs to do X but the other thinks they should so Y. Or both siblings may agree but one sibling has a spouse or partner who puts undue pressure on them and redirects that sibling to make a different choice. Sometimes it's motivated by money, or inheritance of family heirlooms or property etc.

But there are probably cases where it is necessary. As cwillie mentioned requirements like dual signatures can be problematic. But if you feel that it would work for your family, I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work if all are in agreement.

Additionally - you need to make sure that if you choose to go that route that if one of you chooses to step down - that the other maintains full POA power - in other words - make sure the verbiage is written in such a way that it is clear that full POA is transferred to the other POA in the event that the shared POA steps down or predeceases etc.

Both my mothers health and financial POAs were written as "jointly and severally", that's legalese for either or. I can understand why lawyers discourage joint POAs because it can be a huge pain if both parties must sign everything but I don't get why there is so much push back against jointly and severally, not all families are a dysfunctional mess.

That's how my mom's checking acct was made out: On the signature line it said
both names of her MPOA and her FPOA and her. So, she could sign, or one of the POA's or 2 of them or all 3.

She was nothing if not prepared!