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If you are arranging things for a parent, there is one thing that matters more than everything else on this page, and it is worth knowing before you read any further.
A Lasting Power of Attorney can only be made while your parent still understands it. Once capacity has gone, there is no way to put one in place.
Everything else can be organised later. That cannot.
01246 293015You're welcome to call whether or not you want to instruct anyone.
What to do first
- 01Find out whether there are powers of attorney already
Ask your parent, and check with their solicitor if they have one. Many people made an Enduring Power of Attorney years ago, which is still valid but only covers property and finances — not health and care decisions.
- 02If there aren't, start that now
Both types — property and financial affairs, and health and welfare. Registration with the Office of the Public Guardian takes weeks after signing, so the document isn't usable the day it's signed.
- 03Find the will, and check when it was written
Not to change anything, and not to discuss who gets what. Just to know it exists and where it is. If your parent remarried after writing it, the earlier will may have been revoked.
- 04Write down what they have, roughly
Accounts, pensions, the house, any insurance. Rough figures are fine. Someone will need this eventually, and it is far easier to assemble now than later.
The alternative, costed
If capacity goes before an LPA is in place, the only route is deputyship through the Court of Protection. It is workable. It is slower, more expensive, and less within the family's control in every respect.
Meanwhile, banks freeze accounts on notice of incapacity. Bills, care fees and mortgage payments still fall due, and the family has no authority to pay them.
Care fees, honestly
Care is means-tested. A local authority assesses what your parent owns, and above the upper threshold they pay for their own care in full. Between the two thresholds there is a tapered contribution. The family home is usually disregarded while a spouse or certain other relatives still live there, and counted once they don't.
Families arrive at this page believing the house can be protected from care fees by transferring it, and we would rather tell you the truth than let you find out later.
Local authorities can look back at transfers, treat them as deliberate deprivation of assets, assess your parent as though they still owned what was given away, and in some cases pursue the person who received it. There is no fixed time limit on that look-back. Timing and intention both matter, and anyone promising you a guaranteed way around it is not being straight with you.
What can be done is narrower and more honest: making sure the wills and the property ownership are structured properly, well before care is in prospect, so that what passes on a first death is treated correctly. That is planning. Moving assets when a care assessment is already foreseeable is not.
It cannot simply be given away.
Having the conversation
Most people reading this already know what needs doing. The difficulty is raising it with a parent who does not want to discuss it. A few things that help.
Make it about control, not decline
An LPA is your parent choosing who speaks for them. Without one, a court chooses. Framed that way it is the opposite of giving something up.
Start with your own
Telling a parent you are sorting out your own will and LPAs, and asking whether theirs are in order, is a very different conversation from telling them they need to.
Don't do it all in one sitting
Raise it, leave it, come back. A decision that feels forced usually gets refused, and a second conversation a fortnight later often goes differently.
Ask what worries them
Usually it is losing independence, being a burden, or being seen as no longer capable. Naming the real fear moves things along faster than any argument about paperwork.
Involve your siblings early
One person arranging things alone is where family disputes begin. It is easier to include everyone now than to explain afterwards.
Let someone else be the messenger
Some parents will accept from an adviser or a GP what they will not accept from their own child. That is not a failure on your part.
What we can do
Put the powers of attorney in place, review or write the will, and look at how the property is held. That is usually all of it. If your parent's estate is straightforward, we will say so — and if what you actually need is a conversation rather than a service, that is fine too.
If it would help to talk it through
Call us. We'll tell you what needs doing and in what order. Monday to Friday.
01246 293015Or find out where they stand first
Eleven questions, about five minutes, and a report written for your parent's situation — what's in place, what isn't, and what would matter most. Free, and no obligation.
Start your Clarity ReportWe'll never share your details.