Lasting Power of Attorney
Planning for the years you are alive but unable to decide for yourself. The document people most often wish they had signed sooner.
A will deals with what happens after you die. It does nothing for the situation a will never touches: being alive but unable to make your own decisions. A stroke, dementia, a serious accident, or a period of severe illness can take away the capacity to manage money or consent to care, sometimes without warning. A Lasting Power of Attorney is the document that prepares for exactly that, and it is the one most people put off until it is too late to make.
What a Lasting Power of Attorney is
A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is a legal document that lets you, the donor, appoint one or more people you trust, your attorneys, to make decisions on your behalf if you lose the mental capacity to make them yourself. You set the terms while you still have capacity. That timing is the whole point of the document, and it is also its trap: you can only make an LPA while you are still able to understand and agree to it. Once capacity is lost, the option is gone.
The two types
There are two separate LPAs, covering two different parts of your life. Most people benefit from putting both in place at the same time, since the cost and effort of adding the second alongside the first is small.
What happens if you do not have one
Many people assume a spouse or adult child can simply step in and manage things. They cannot. Without a registered LPA, no one has automatic legal authority over your finances or your care, not even a husband, wife, or civil partner. Joint accounts can be frozen, and a partner cannot access money held in your sole name.
Without an LPA, your family has to apply to the Court of Protection to be appointed as your deputy. It carries an application fee of several hundred pounds plus ongoing annual supervision fees, takes months rather than weeks, and ends with a judge deciding who manages your affairs rather than you. An LPA, made in advance, avoids all of it.
Choosing your attorney
An attorney must be eighteen or over and someone you trust completely, as they may one day control your money and your care. They can be a spouse, an adult child, another relative, a close friend, or a professional such as a solicitor. You can appoint more than one, and you decide whether they must act together on every decision, or whether they can also act independently. Appointing a replacement attorney is sensible, in case your first choice is later unable or unwilling to act.
Setting one up and what it costs
An LPA must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian before it can be used, and a signed but unregistered LPA has no legal effect at all. Registration costs £92 per LPA, so £184 for both types. A reduction is available if you earn under £12,000 a year, and an exemption applies if you receive certain means-tested benefits. You can complete and register an LPA yourself through the government's online service, or use a solicitor for around £300 to £600 per document where your circumstances are complicated.
Officially, registration takes eight to ten weeks if the application is error-free, though in practice it often runs to several months, particularly if a form is rejected for a mistake. The rules described here apply in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland operate their own separate systems.
Register an LPA the moment it is signed, not when a crisis arrives. Because you cannot make or register one after capacity is lost, and registration can take months, a document left in a drawer to deal with later is the single most common and most painful mistake in this area.
Common mistakes
- Leaving it too late. An LPA cannot be created once capacity has gone, which is precisely when it is needed.
- Making only one type. Financial authority does not cover health decisions, and the reverse is also true.
- Signing but not registering. An unregistered LPA cannot be used, so register it straight away.
- Not telling your attorneys it exists, or where the document is kept.
- Never reviewing it after a major life change such as a divorce, which can affect who you want acting for you.
An LPA sits alongside a will as the two halves of getting your affairs in order, covering incapacity and death respectively. The estate side, including wills and inheritance tax, is covered in Wills, Gifts & Generational Money.
Putting an LPA in place means facing questions most people prefer to avoid: losing control, depending on others, and who you would trust with your life if you could no longer speak for yourself. The Conscious Currency® looks at what sits underneath that avoidance, so that handling it becomes an act of care rather than a source of dread, and your affairs are arranged to protect the people you love rather than burden them.
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