A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is a legal document which gives another person 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’s 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.
If you choose to make a Lasting Power of Attorney, the benefits are:
- 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 a LPA are a one off fixed fee payment, whereas there are on-going 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, who have 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.
For more information, please click here for our Lasting Power of Attorney information sheet.