Lasting Power of Attorney

If you ever lose the ability to make decisions for yourself your loved ones may find themselves unable to make even the simplest of decisions for you or access your resources to care for you or manage them. This can cause hardship for you and for your family. A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is a legal document that you can put in place while you still have mental capacity to make sure that this situation is avoided. Using this document you can make sure that someone you know and trust will be able to make decisions about your finances and your healthcare if in the future you lose the ability to make these decisions yourself. For more information see our guide on LPAs here

• If you have a joint bank account, it will be frozen by your bank if they become aware of your loss of capacity. Your spouse or partner has no automatic right to manage your finances. With an LPA in place your Attorney will be able to continue to access your account seamlessly.
•  You will lose control over how decisions are made for you – For example decisions made by healthcare professionals may not match your wishes. With an LPA in place you can state exactly what kinds of decisions your Attorney’s can make and what you want them to consider.
• There will be significant delays in making decisions if you lose capacity. Someone will need to apply to the Court of Protection to be appointed as your Deputy, a process that can take upwards of 6 months. During this time decisions can’t be made for you.
•  Losing capacity without an LPA in place is more expensive. Court applications to appoint a Deputy cost upwards of £800 per application – so £1600 to cover both health & welfare and property & financial affairs. There are also ongoing fees for the Deputies, all paid out of your estate!
•  If you own joint property with your spouse or partner, they will face difficulties in selling the property if you lose capacity.

If you are over the age of 18 are capable of understanding the nature and effect of the document, known as ‘having capacity’, then you may put an LPA in place.

If you lack capacity to understand an LPA then you cannot enter into it and no one can do so on your behalf.

Our home-visit consultant will use their experience to guide you through the areas where guidance may be required.

This includes inserting the appropriately worded instructions and preferences to make sure that you have full control over what decisions your Attorneys can make and how they make them.

We understand completing an LPA document can be a little daunting for some. However, we will ensure that you are confident and will be on hand throughout the process, offering advice and guidance when required. We will guide you through the signing process to make sure your LPAs are valid, and we’ll also help you through the registration process with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) so you know you’ll end up with a legal document that is registered and ready to use as soon as it’s needed.

Without an LPA in place there is no one with the legal authority to manage your affairs, for example, to access bank accounts or investments in your name or sell your property on your behalf.

In these circumstances, in order for someone to obtain legal authority over your affairs, that person would need to apply to the Court of Protection and the Court will decide on the person to be appointed to manage your affairs. The person chosen is appointed your ‘Deputy’.

This is a very different type of appointment which is significantly more intricate and costly than being appointed as an Attorney under a LPA. The process of appointing a Deputy is much more time consuming and costly.

The application itself can take upwards of 6 months and costs £385 just to get started, before factoring in legal costs, supervision fees, and insurance (upwards of £1500 in most cases).

Compare this to an LPA that takes on average 6 weeks to be registered and costs £82 per document plus our fees for preparation and the LPA is the obvious choice.

If you wish to have peace of mind that a particular person will have the legal authority to look after your affairs and you want to make matters easier for them and less expensive, then you should strongly consider getting an LPA in place.