A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is a legal document which gives another person the authority to act on your behalf if you are physically or mentally no longer able to deal with your own affairs.

With the population getting older and more people getting dementia and similar illnesses, more and more people need someone to act on their behalf at some point. If a person loses their mental or physical capacity and do not have a LPA in place, the family of that person (the Patient) are required to apply to the Court of Protection to be appointed as a Deputy for the Patient, which costs several times more than a LPA, takes a much longer time, and ultimately means that the Court of Protection, rather than the Patient themselves, are deciding who to appoint to deal with the Patients affairs.

You can choose your own attorneys – people you know you can trust completely. You will pay substantially less than if you were required to apply to the Court of Protection, and the costs of an LPA are a one-off fixed fee payment, whereas there are ongoing annual costs when dealing with the Court of Protection.

Your LPA can be registered immediately while you still have capacity, and then should you lose capacity the LPA will be ready for immediate use, meaning there will be no 'gap' in the running of your financial affairs, whereas an application to the Court of Protection could take several months, meaning your family could struggle financially to keep you whilst the Court application is in the process.

You can put limits on what your attorneys can do, so if there is anything you particularly do not want your attorneys to deal with, you can clarify this from the outset, rather than leaving it up to the discretion of the Court of Protection, which has no real knowledge of what you personally would want.

If you would like to discuss a potential matter or would like any further information, then please contact one of our team using the details shown on this page.

A Court of Protection Order will be necessary if someone loses their mental faculties and yet access to their finances is required. The Court of Protection process is drawn out and should be started as soon as possible after someone's mental incapacity, so that the Order can be put in place as soon as possible.

The Court of Protection requires that various people are advised about the Court application, including a set list of relatives. All of these people will get the chance to object to the appointment of a person as Deputy if they feel that the Deputy is not an appropriate choice. A doctor's report will be required in order to establish that a person has definitely lost their faculties. The doctor is likely to charge a fee for preparing such a report, and the fees tend to vary from one doctor to the next.

The Court requires an insurance bond to be taken out by the Deputy so that if they abscond with any money or assets, then the person who has lost capacity can be reimbursed.

If you would like to discuss a potential matter or would like any further information, then please contact one of our team using the details shown on this page.

Please note that we do not deal with Health and Welfare Deputyship Applications.