Lasting Powers of Attorney
Decide Who Will Protect Your Interests If You Cannot Make Decisions Yourself
Lasting Powers of Attorney: What They Are and Why You Might Need One
If you were involved in a serious accident tomorrow, or a diagnosis meant you could no longer manage your own affairs, who would pay your mortgage, speak to your doctors, or decide where you should live? Without the right legal document in place, the answer may not be the person you would choose. It may even be “nobody”, until the Court of Protection decides for you.
A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is how you make sure that choice remains yours.
What Is a Lasting Power of Attorney?
A Lasting Power of Attorney is a legal document that lets you (the donor) choose one or more trusted people, known as attorneys, to make decisions or act on your behalf if you become unable to make those decisions yourself. That might be because of illness, an accident, or a loss of mental capacity such as dementia.
An LPA has to be set up and registered while you still have the mental capacity to understand what you’re doing. This is the point people most often get wrong: an LPA cannot be arranged after capacity has already been lost. At that stage, the only route left for your family is an application to the Court of Protection for a deputyship order, a process that is slower, more expensive, and puts the decision about who acts for you in the hands of the court rather than you.
Putting an LPA in place isn’t an admission that something is about to go wrong. It’s a piece of ordinary, sensible planning: the same instinct that leads people to write a Will or take out insurance, applied to decision-making rather than money or property.
The Two Types of Lasting Power of Attorney
There are two separate LPAs, each covering a different part of your life. You can make one or both, depending on your circumstances.
Property and Financial Affairs LPA
This LPA allows your attorneys to manage your money and property. That covers things like running your bank accounts, paying your bills, collecting your pension or benefits, managing investments, and buying or selling property on your behalf.
Unlike the Health and Welfare LPA, this one can be used before you lose capacity, if you want it to be. For example, while you’re recovering from an operation, or if you simply find it easier to have someone else deal with your finances. You stay in control of when and how it’s used; it doesn’t switch your attorneys on automatically.
Read more on our dedicated Property and Financial Affairs LPA page.
Health and Welfare LPA
This LPA allows your attorneys to make decisions about your personal welfare: medical treatment, day-to-day care, and where you live, including a move into a care home. It can only be used once you’ve lost the mental capacity to make those decisions yourself.
It can also, if you choose to give this specific authority, allow your attorneys to make decisions about life-sustaining treatment. This is an important and sometimes emotional decision, and it’s one we talk through carefully with clients rather than leaving buried in the small print of a form.
Read more on our dedicated Health and Welfare LPA page.
When Might You Need One, or Both?
Some people need only one type of LPA. Many people benefit from having both. It depends on your circumstances, but here are the situations we see most often.
You may want a Property and Financial Affairs LPA if you own your own home or other property, if you have savings, investments or a pension that would need managing, or if you simply want a trusted person able to step in and deal with your finances at short notice, before any question of lost capacity arises at all.
You may want a Health and Welfare LPA if you want a say in who makes decisions about your medical care and daily life should you become unable to make them yourself, rather than leaving those decisions to whichever family member happens to be present, or to professionals who don’t know your wishes.
Many people choose to set up both at the same time. It’s a natural pairing: your finances and your welfare are both things you’d want a trusted person handling on your terms, not by default. A common question is whether one covers the other: it doesn’t. They’re separate documents dealing with separate parts of your life, and you can appoint different attorneys for each if you wish.
An LPA becomes particularly important if you don’t have an obvious next of kin, if your family relationships are complicated, or if you’d prefer specific people (rather than whoever the law would otherwise recognise) to be the ones making decisions for you.
What Does Wise Owl Wills Charge?
Our fee for preparing a single LPA is £100. If you’d like both LPAs prepared for one person at the same time, the fee is £150 for the pair.
On top of our fee, the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) charges its own registration fee to formally register each LPA, currently £92 per LPA. If you’re registering both types, that’s £184 in OPG fees, in addition to our £150. The OPG fee goes to the government body that maintains the LPA register; it isn’t something we charge or keep.
If your income is low, the OPG operates a fee reduction and exemption scheme, so it’s worth checking whether you qualify before you assume the full fee applies. We’re happy to point you in the right direction on this.
What Each LPA Covers, at a Glance
| Property & Financial Affairs | Health & Welfare | |
|---|---|---|
| Bank accounts | ✓ | ✕ |
| Bills | ✓ | ✕ |
| Property | ✓ | ✕ |
| Pensions and investments | ✓ | ✕ |
| Medical care | ✕ | ✓ |
| Care home decisions | ✕ | ✓ |
| Daily care | ✕ | ✓ |
| Life-sustaining treatment | ✕ | ✓ |
| Can be used while you have capacity? | Yes | No |
| Can you have both LPAs? | Yes | Yes |
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a solicitor to make an LPA?
No, it isn’t a legal requirement. But an LPA is a document that only matters when you’re least able to fix a mistake in it: when you’ve already lost capacity. Errors, ambiguous instructions, or the wrong choice of “jointly” versus “jointly and severally” attorneys can cause real problems for your family at the worst possible time, and can lead to rejection by the OPG. We prepare LPAs with getting the detail right, first time, front of mind.
Who should I appoint as my attorneys?
Choose people you trust: people who will be capable of making decisions about your health and welfare, or your finances, in your best interests when the time comes, and who have no conflict of interest with you. That’s often a spouse or partner, an adult child, another close family member, or a good friend, but the right choice depends entirely on who you’d genuinely want making those calls on your behalf, not on who’s expected to do it.
Can more than one person be my attorney?
Yes. You can appoint more than one attorney for each LPA, and you decide how they must act: jointly, jointly and severally, or for some decisions jointly and others severally. You can also appoint replacement attorneys to step in if your first choice can no longer act.
Does my spouse or next of kin automatically get these powers if I don't have an LPA?
No. This is one of the most common misunderstandings about LPAs. Marriage, civil partnership, or being someone’s closest relative gives you no automatic legal authority to manage their finances or make care decisions on their behalf. Without an LPA, your family would need to apply to the Court of Protection.
What happens if I lose capacity without an LPA in place?
Someone close to you (often a family member) would need to apply to the Court of Protection to be appointed as your deputy. It’s a longer, more expensive and more restrictive process than an LPA, and the court decides who is appointed rather than you.
Can I cancel or change an LPA once it's made?
Yes, as long as you still have the mental capacity to do so. You can revoke an LPA at any time while capable, and put a new one in its place if your wishes or circumstances change.
Is an LPA the same as a Will?
No, and it’s easy to see why people conflate them. A Will only takes effect after death and deals with your estate. An LPA takes effect during your lifetime, while you’re alive but unable to act for yourself, and deals with decisions about your money, property, care, and welfare. Many people need both. If you haven’t yet made a Will, it’s worth looking at our Wills services alongside your LPA planning.
Do both LPAs need the same attorneys?
No. You’re free to appoint the same people for both, or different people for each: for example, a spouse for health and welfare decisions and an adult child with financial experience for property and finances. What matters is choosing people you trust and who are suited to that particular kind of decision-making.
What about an old Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA)? Do I need to replace it?
Before LPAs existed, the equivalent document was an EPA, covering property and financial affairs only; there was never an EPA for health and welfare decisions. EPAs were replaced by LPAs when the Mental Capacity Act 2005 came into force, and it hasn’t been possible to create a new EPA since 1 October 2007. That doesn’t make an existing EPA worthless: one formally registered before October 2007 remains valid, and a properly completed EPA that was never registered can still be registered now, provided it still reflects your wishes. It should be replaced with an LPA, though, if you need to change or remove an attorney, if you want to change how multiple attorneys must act (jointly, or jointly and severally), or if you want to add restrictions or safeguards it doesn’t currently have. And an LPA is essential regardless of any EPA you hold if you want an attorney to make health and welfare decisions (EPAs never covered this) or if you want an attorney to be able to deal with your property and finances before you lose capacity, rather than only afterwards. If you’re not sure whether an EPA you or a family member holds still does the job, that’s worth checking with us.
How long does the process take?
Once we have all the information we need from you, we can usually have your LPA documents ready for you to sign within 7 days. After that, the Office of the Public Guardian currently takes around 8 to 10 weeks to register the LPA once it’s been sent to them, though this can vary. It’s a good reason not to leave an LPA until it’s urgently needed.
Why should I choose Wise Owl Wills?
We help you make the right decisions, and make sure those decisions are properly reflected in a legally effective LPA. Every LPA follows a personal consultation, with everything explained in plain English so you can make your choices with confidence rather than guessing your way through a form. And our pricing is fixed and transparent from the outset, so you know exactly what you’ll pay before you commit to anything.
Next Steps
An LPA is only useful if it’s in place before you need it, and by definition, you can’t put one in place once capacity has already gone. If you’d like to talk through which LPA, or LPAs, make sense for your situation, get in touch with Wise Owl Wills and we will guide you through it all clearly, without the jargon.
Call us today on 0161 524 1033
Or book your free home consultation online