A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) allows someone else to make or to help you make a decisions on your behalf, which is in your best interests, if you lack the capacity to do so yourself. In many ways having an LPA is as essential as making a will and many clients choose to do both at the same time for that extra reassurance that if during your lifetime you lost the capacity to make your own decisions, someone can immediately take over for you.
Why you should consider making a LPA
LPAs may be set up to allow your appointed attorney(s) to take decisions on your behalf in matters of Property and Financial Affairs or in matters relating to your Health and Welfare. For instance, you might want someone to manage your bank account on your behalf, or to appoint someone who understands your wishes in this regard to take decisions about your health treatment or care. Your attorney must always act in your best interests when exercising decision they are making for you
Various safeguards are built in under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 to prevent anyone being forced into an LPA against their wishes. An independent person, must act as a certificate provider. This person must either have known the person making the LPA for at least two years or be a professional, such as a solicitor, doctor or social worker, and they must sign the application forms to verify that the person making the LPA has not been pressured into taking out the application.
An LPA may only be used by your attorney or attorneys if and when you are no longer able to act or you lack the capacity to make decisions for yourself and the LPA must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, which oversees LPAs, before it can be used.
We strongly recommend that you protect yourself and your family from an unexpected mental incapacity or deteriorating mental health by having a lasting power of attorney already in place for that eventuality. Contact us to find out more and why you should consider making an LPA today.
When setting up an LPA, you will need at least one attorney, but you can have more if you wish or replacement attorneys if one should die before you or be unable to act when the time comes. If you do have more than one attorney, you must decide whether you want them to act together, separately, or together for some matters and separately for others. If you should at a later date want make changes to your LPA, for instance, if, when the LPA was first registered, you appointed a sibling as attorney, you might later wish to appoint your grown-up children to act on your behalf in the event of the death of your brother or sister, you must revoke the LPA and make a new one, as long as you still retain capacity to do so.
This may happen suddenly if you have a stroke or progressively if you develop dementia. A Lasting Power of Attorney enables you, the donor, to appoint someone to meet your needs at a time when you lack capacity to make decisions about your finances or your health and care. Without an LPA in place should you lose capacity to make decisions for yourself, your finances are frozen until an application can be made for a deputy can be appointed by the Court of Protection. This can take time and delay making important decisions and involve considerable time and expense in legal fees.
We strongly recommend that you protect yourself and your family from an unexpected incapacity or deteriorating mental health by having a lasting power of attorney already in place. Contact us to find out more and why you should consider making one today.
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