Lasting Powers of Attorney
A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) allows you to appoint one or more people (your attorney) to make decisions on your behalf about your property and finance or health and welfare at a time in the future when as a result of an accident or ill health, you no longer have mental capacity to make decisions for yourself.
Why make an LPA?
If you lose mental capacity without an LPA in force your family and loved ones will not be able to make decisions for you or handle your affairs. Joint bank accounts may even be frozen. It will be necessary for someone to apply to the Court of Protection for the appointment of a deputy (see below) to handle your financial affairs, this may not be the person who you would have chosen for yourself. The procedure can be time consuming and expensive. If a decision needs to be made in respect of your health and welfare, the Court will make the decisions on your behalf, but will not interfere with decisions made by an attorney appointed under a Health & Welfare LPA, which are made in your best interests.
Why use Rose & Rose Solicitors?
We can give full and impartial advice on the choice of attorney’s and any restrictions that you may wish to make to prevent your attorneys from doing something that you would not want them to do or advising your attorneys of the decisions you would want them to make should the situation arise.
For your attorney to use the LPA it must be registered at the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). We believe it is important that your LPA is professionally prepared to ensure that it is not rejected at registration. Even if registration is successful, your attorneys may have trouble using the document if it is rejected by banks and other institutions.
Court of Protection
If you know someone who lacks capacity and they do not have an LPA in place we can assist in the application to appoint a deputy at the Court of Protection. If there is no-one suitable we can act as a professional deputy.
We can also assist in other applications that may be required i.e. to sell property or make a statutory Will for the person who lacks capacity if they do not have a Will in place or their current Will is out of date and does not reflect what would be their wishes.
Sally-Ann Joseph is a full accredited member of Solicitors for the Elderly.
We can provide you with a fixed fee for this service so you will know exactly what costs you will need to pay.
For further information, please contact one of our team on 0203 131 8548 or info@roselegal.co.uk
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