Lasting Power of Attorney – LPA

A Lasting Power of Attorney or LPA can be granted to someone who can look after your interest should you become unable to make those decisions for yourself through illness or accident. Most people don’t get round to making a Lasting Power of Attorney as they just don’t think a lack of mental capacity or accident will ever affect them, not realising that if they were unable to make certain decisions due to accident or illness then certain aspects of life can become very tricky, very quickly.

The problem with that approach is when an LPA is needed it becomes very difficult to get and needs to be done through applying to a court. This can be both time consuming and very expensive – It can take somewhere in the region of 9 months and with costs potentially in excess of £3000+. It would be exceedingly difficult to make decisions on either your health and treatment or your financial matters until the court appointed an Attorney – how difficult could this make life for both you and anyone who relies on you?

Appointing an Attorney while you have mental capacity to do so is very easy and means that you safeguard both your and your families interests. Appointing an LPA to look after your affairs gives someone (or more than one person) the power to make decisions on your behalf about either your Health and Welfare or financial affairs or possibly both if you lost the capacity to do so for yourself through either an unfortunate accident or illness.

The Lasting Power of Attorney must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) before it can be used. Once registration is complete however the LPA is then active and can be used immediately in case of an emergency, however most remain dormant unless mental capacity was lost. We would always advise sending the LPA in as soon as it is signed as this can take 12 weeks to be registered by the OPG.