Lasting Power of Attorney
Who would be able to legally convey your preferences and choices in the event of you having an accident, becoming seriously ill, or if you’re not able to make your own decisions or handle your affairs due to cognitive issues.
Who has the legal right to carry out everyday activities like banking or make some extremely important health choices for you?
Banks, your Local Authority or Doctors?
Appointing attorneys to deal with your affairs gives you a voice when you may not be able to verbally or mentally communicate your preferences or decisions. Having Lasting Powers of Attorney in place will ensure your nominated attorney can make health & welfare and property & financial decisions as if you had made them yourself.
Your attorney can be anybody you like, including close friends and family members.
There are 2 types of Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPA)
Health & Welfare
A Health & Welfare LPA allows you to choose one person or more to make decisions about things like your daily routine e.g. eating and what to wear, medical care, moving into a care home and life-sustaining treatment. This type of lasting power of attorney can only be used when you’re unable to make your own decisions.
Property & Financial Affairs
A Property & Financial Affairs LPA lets you choose one person or more to make decisions about money and property for you, e.g. paying bills, collecting benefits and selling your home. This type of lasting power of attorney can be used as soon as it’s registered, with your permission.
Registration of your Lasting Powers of Attorney
An LPA cannot be used by the Attorneys until it is registered with the Government body that oversees these documents for safeguarding purposes; the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). The OPG stringently checks that the documents are filled, signed and dated correctly and then uses their perforated stamp to approve the application to register. Only at this point will the documents be accepted for use by institutions.
The OPG charges to register the documents, currently £82.00* per document, so an individual registering both Financial and Welfare LPAs will pay £164 for registration. We advise for registration to be done at the time of creation as the OPG takes 8-12 weeks to return them which can be detrimental in the instance of an unexpected illness or accident when they are required for use immediately.
Registration can be delayed to a later date as once the documents are signed they can be registered by the attorneys should the donor become incapable to do it themselves, however this is not ideal. Once they are registered they can be stored safely until they are required for use at any point in the future.
* Cost for LPA correct August 2021, donors on means tested benefits my be exempt of payment of the registration fees. Donor’s with gross annual income is less than £12,000, they may be eligible for a 50% reduction of the registration fees.
What happens if you don't have powers of attorneys in place?
This is not true. The Local Authority (Council) have accountability over the individual and it is their responsibility to ensure safeguarding procedures are met, many families in this situation feel like they are treated as a number as oppose to a human being.
Your family can apply to the Court of Protection to put into place what is known as a Deputyship Order. Arranging a Deputyship order is a long (sometimes taking longer than 6 months to be granted) and expensive (sometimes costing two thousand pounds per application) undertaking, often
leading to the family having to attend a Court Hearing to reach a resolution, which is distressing for the family. It is possible for the Local Authority to bypass the family and choose to appoint a Panel Deputy to act on behalf of the incapacitated individual. A Panel Deputy is an independent person, often a local solicitor, who henceforth has the responsibility of managing the affairs of the person in question. They will most likely never have met the individual before.