HAVE YOU MADE LASTING POWERS OF ATTORNEY?

A Power of Attorney is where you nominate a trusted person to look after your affairs. There are two types that you can set up. One for your property and financial affairs and one for your health and welfare. Making Lasting Powers of Attorney documents doesn’t mean you’re giving up control there and then. With the property and financial affairs document, you can choose for it to only come into effect when you’re no longer capable of making these decisions or for your Attorneys to be able to act for you whilst you have capacity with your consent and should you no longer be capable of making these decisions. With the health and welfare decisions document, this should only be used once you are no longer capable of making these decisions.

You can only set up a Lasting Power of Attorney when you have mental capacity. Once you've lost capacity, it's too late.

The most important thing is to act early. This story from Forumite Norma Desmond explains why:

“My mum is deputy (via the Court of Protection) to my dad, who has advanced dementia. It's a very long, drawn out and quite intrusive process.

It's also expensive. Mum will have to pay hefty yearly fees too. I just wish we'd managed to get Power of Attorney instead, when Dad was more capable. He got ill very fast and we couldn't implement it.”

If you would like to arrange an appointment to discuss making Lasting Powers of Attorney, please do not hesitate to contact our office on 01606 74301 and ask for a member of our Private Client team who will be more than happy to assist with booking arrangements.