Lasting Powers of Attorney
The one document you can’t create when you need it. An LPA decides who speaks for you if you can’t speak for yourself — and it must be made while you still can.
A Lasting Power of Attorney lets you appoint people to make decisions for you if you can’t make them yourself. It is the only document in estate planning that becomes impossible to create at exactly the moment it is needed.
Capacity can go slowly, over years. It can also go in an afternoon — a stroke, an accident, a rapid decline. Once it has gone, an LPA cannot be made, and the alternative is an application to the Court of Protection.
This is the shortest page of the six because the argument doesn’t need help.
The two types — and why one isn’t enough
Property and financial affairs
Bank accounts, bills, investments, selling a house, running a business. Can be used, with your permission, while you still have capacity — useful if illness makes admin difficult rather than impossible.
Health and welfare
Medical treatment, care arrangements, where you live, and life-sustaining treatment decisions. Can only be used once you lack capacity. Most people who make one LPA make the financial one and skip this — which leaves the decisions that matter most to a process rather than a person.
Choosing attorneys
Jointly means they must all agree on everything, which is safe and can be paralysing. Jointly and severally lets any of them act alone, which is practical and requires trust. Name replacements. And accept that the right person for money is often not the right person for care decisions.
Registration takes time
An LPA is not usable the moment it is signed. It must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, and that takes weeks. Sign it while it is a formality, not while a family is waiting.
What happens without one
An application to the Court of Protection
Your family applies to be appointed deputy. Months, not weeks, and considerably more expensive than an LPA.
A deputy the court chooses
Usually a family member, but not necessarily the one you would have picked — and in some cases a professional deputy paid from your funds.
Ongoing supervision and annual reporting
Deputyship carries a supervision fee and an annual report to the Office of the Public Guardian, for as long as it lasts.
Accounts frozen while it happens
Banks freeze accounts on notice of incapacity. Bills, care fees and mortgage payments still fall due.
For business owners: the company stops
If the only signatory loses capacity, staff cannot be paid and contracts cannot be signed. A business LPA is a separate document and business owners skip it more often than anyone.
Who needs one
Every adult, and sooner than most people think. This isn’t an old age document — the accidents and illnesses that remove capacity don’t check your date of birth first. If you own a business, own a home, or have anyone who depends on you, it should be in place now.
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