If you have not made a will or PoA

My husband and I both made a will and a Power of Attorney for finance and health. It was certainly worth the trouble and price as my Husband lost his sight, and his health which required him having a quadruple heart bypass

I have had a will for many years and updated it last year.i do need to do POA. I had POA for my late husband, but only for Finance and Property, not forHealth and Welfare - I mistakenly thought as his wife, next of kin and full time carer, I could make decisions regarding his health care, big mistake, as he had vascular dementia and Parkinsons and I had to fight some hard battles in difficult circumstances a few times, so make sure you always do both!
Misadventure, please do act sooner rather than later!

Warmglovesandsocks

I can’t have a POA as I have no-one to act as a POA. My friends didn’t want to do it and told me to get someone younger, but I know no-one younger! I can’t make a Will either as I have no Executor. I wish I did have a POA and an Executor.

I can get re no-one to act as POA and I haven't either. Having told my brother and his family where to go when our parents died = there's just me basically. Anyway - I wouldnt trust erstwhile brother and his family as far as I could throw them anyway.

You can make a will though - no problem at all! Both my original Will and current Will have been made without me having anyone I know personally as executor. In both cases - it's going to be the firm of solicitors my will is with that will do this. I know that means they will charge for their services for that - but I don't suppose it will be that much. It's all very straightforward - one house/whatever I have in the way of savings and I'm expecting a member of staff from the solicitors firm to check through my house for paperwork at the time and that shouldnt be a big issue. It's only a little house - 2 bedrooms. All the paperwork I have is in my study (ie the 2nd bedroom) and I have a clear-through of it at intervals.

I wouldnt really want to lumber anyone I knew personally with being executor anyway.

I've had a will since I bought my first house - with a noticeable size bit of equity in it right from the start.

My father pointed out two things to me when I bought that house:
- now I owned something noticeable I needed to make a will and said "If you don't then your brother will automatically get it - as your next of kin". That definitely made me get a move on - as I had already figured out my brother is very grabby (a verdict proven very correct over the years....)

- plus he warned me that a man might now want me for the wrong reasons and, if I even lived with one, I might be at risk of him taking some of my house equity at least if it came to it. It was the 1980's - so the thought hadn't occurred to me men might try and live off women (though I knew there are women who try and live off men).

Basically - I made out a will then to ensure my brother and his family couldnt get anything from me I hadnt given them. Followed by updating my will when I moved to Wales a few years back. When our parents died I sent my brother a farewell email telling him I'd got a recent Will and not to even try to grab for anything from me - as I'd deliberately left it all to charity.

The other thought re wills is that there is a national office (in London I seem to recall) where a register of wills is kept - ie that there is a will and where it's lodged. Though there was already millions of people that had lodged their details with that office by then the local solicitor here in Wales had omitted to do so!!!!!!!!!!!! When I pointed out to him he'd missed doing part of his job he did put it right and notify that office and apologised for his inefficiency by not charging me the bit of extra cost involved for doing that.

It's as well imo for anyone that needs to know what the position is re whether someone has a will to be able to just contact that national office and they should be told - and no question of someone having to hunt through a house to see if there is a will and where it is.

Cabbie21

My son and daughter have fallen out big time, so I don’t know how anything will be agreed if/ when anything happens to me.

If there is no likelihood of them making up you need to sort things out now. Do you have any other children you could ask or a reliable nephew or niece or younger sibling.

This happened in our family and then the trouble carried over into the Will and that took nearly two years to sort out.

PamelaJ1 The attorneys appointed in a POA should be given the right to act severally or together.

My friend's parents made her and her husband their attorneys, and they only had the right to act together. Her husband died in his 60s, from cancer, her father was dead and her mother had dementia, so she had to go through all the palaver of getting a new POA through the Court of Protection. An unnecessary burden on someone grieving the unexpected loss of her husband.

Where the POAs are for a husband and wife, make sure both have the same attorneys. I was chosen as attorney by my aunt and her husband chose someone else, and they chose one person in common, but all their bank and savings accounts were joint, so the only person able to sign cheques and authorise paying out money was the atttorney common to both. Otherwise cheque had to be signed by both the other attorneys, not easy when one lives in Oxfordshire and one in Essex,

In a previous thread on here a poster had difficulty with. POA when her mother (I think I have this the right way round) needed decisions made but the father, who was the principal attorney, had developed dementia. As he was still alive the children couldn’t step in.
Because of that thread we have made both our children and ourselves equally responsible.
We did ours online all at once and got one wrong! How did that happen? All done now thank goodness but it was a faff.
My friend found someone do it for her, at a cost but not as expensive as a solicitor.

Cabbie21

My son and daughter have fallen out big time, so I don’t know how anything will be agreed if/ when anything happens to me.

Our two sons aren’t on the best of terms at the moment and one of them is reluctant to heal the rift. We made wills years ago and they were joint executors but because of the current situation we are going to make new wills and our granddaughter will be executor along with us ie if I die first my DH and our granddaughter will be joint executors and if my DH dies first I will be joint executor with our granddaughter, she is 26 now so will be able to handle it. Over the last five years we have simplified our finances, we have a joint current account and a joint savings account so when one of us passes away the funds will automatically pass to the other, we have no mortgage on our house and the deeds are in joint names. We are in the process of setting up POA for health and aren’t convinced we need one for finances because of the joint accounts we have.

Madmeg

Maybe I need a new thread for this, but maybe some of you can advise on that. We did the old-style POAs some years ago and as far as I can tell they are still okay. Back then there was no such thing as Health and Welfare POAs, so last week I filled in the online forms. We need signatures to say we are of sound mind and have not been coerced and my local Town Councillor (ex County Councillor) thinks he would be an appropriate person to sign.

Do folks think we need to do new Financial POAs as well?

But another issue is wills. We did these abt 15 years ago and were persuaded to put our house into a Trust. This entailed changing the ownership from Joint Tenants to Tenants in common (each owing a separate 50% of it) so that on the first death half would go into the Trust. It's value would then be "saved" for our two daughters. The idea was to prevent that portion being used up for care fees for the surviving spouse.

Since then our DDs are both married and well-settled in life and we now feel that we might need all our resources to provide care for one or both us at some point. Plus we ought to seriously consider downsizing so the value of half a house would be a lot smaller anyway.

So, we want to revert the ownership back to being Joint Tenants and making new wills (or maybe a codicil?) to leave the lot to each other or to our DDs when the second of us dies.

Would we need a solicitor to revert back to "the norm"? And/or to re-write the wills? Or could we do one or both of these ourselves?

You do not need to make a new POA for finances, the old LPA is fine.

Personally I would not change meh will s if I were you but obviously your choice. The advice you had was correct and good advice and has been done before any diagnoses so they cannot say you were trying to avoid care costs. If you change it back to what you call normal, which is actually not so normal any more all your money would go on care costs. It depends on how much money we are talking about and how long it would last. I think a good financial adviser is worth his weight in gold in these instances. If it would not last long it does in my opinion not matter too much as you would be funded soon anyway and therefore have limited choice of care home. There are for and against both sides as we have seen many times here on Gransnet.

Claremont

I just cannot understand how anyone over 50 does not have a will securely in place.

We are still together (55 years), so not POA at the moment- but when there will be one of us left, we shall do asap.

Either of you could have a huge stroke tomorrow, so what then when you have no capacity. This happened to my husband years ago, much younger than you. I learned my lesson and did my POAs straight away. I lost my son to an accident when he was 23 , you do not know what is around the corner. Please get your paperwork in order, it is too hard the other way around. Worth every penny to get it done.

I updated my will when DH died and had my solicitor draw up POA it took eleven months to complete it.
My advice is to make sure you have it in place you can do it yourself for a fraction of the cost of a solicitor.

Please, please make a will and get POA to make life easier for those who have to deal with everything . I had two estates to sort within 18 months and thank goodness everything was in place! It was exhausting though and emotionally draining

I have found it's usually one of three reasons:
Lack of money /or unwillingness to spend on something such as this
Laziness, in can't be bothered thinking about the future or filling in forms, or going to a solicitor

Fear, in that once you have done your will you might die sooner or someone might polish you off.

I might add that yes, I have a will !

Maybe I need a new thread for this, but maybe some of you can advise on that. We did the old-style POAs some years ago and as far as I can tell they are still okay. Back then there was no such thing as Health and Welfare POAs, so last week I filled in the online forms. We need signatures to say we are of sound mind and have not been coerced and my local Town Councillor (ex County Councillor) thinks he would be an appropriate person to sign.

Do folks think we need to do new Financial POAs as well?

But another issue is wills. We did these abt 15 years ago and were persuaded to put our house into a Trust. This entailed changing the ownership from Joint Tenants to Tenants in common (each owing a separate 50% of it) so that on the first death half would go into the Trust. It's value would then be "saved" for our two daughters. The idea was to prevent that portion being used up for care fees for the surviving spouse.

Since then our DDs are both married and well-settled in life and we now feel that we might need all our resources to provide care for one or both us at some point. Plus we ought to seriously consider downsizing so the value of half a house would be a lot smaller anyway.

So, we want to revert the ownership back to being Joint Tenants and making new wills (or maybe a codicil?) to leave the lot to each other or to our DDs when the second of us dies.

Would we need a solicitor to revert back to "the norm"? And/or to re-write the wills? Or could we do one or both of these ourselves?

We sorted our will around 2 years ago. I need to sort out the Lasting Power of Attorney (finance and health) for my elderly husband.

I started on one but when I went to the surgery asking whether his doctor can sign the form, the receptionist told me that it will cost £250 and involves a 30 minutes to an hour consultation with his doctor. So I let the registration lapse and they refunded the fees.

I will ask one of our neighbours to see whether they are willing to sign the form.

The reason I have not got around to doing it is I have been so busy dealing with paperwork from middle of last year for one thing or another.

I’ve got an out of date will, as my sons have now got children, so an update is needed. The LPA I’ve looked at the Gov.uk website and lots of information on there. Register a LOA is £83. It’s good to have things in order as we get older, especially, money properly and health issues. Good luck.

Warmglovesandsocks

I can’t have a POA as I have no-one to act as a POA. My friends didn’t want to do it and told me to get someone younger, but I know no-one younger! I can’t make a Will either as I have no Executor. I wish I did have a POA and an Executor.

What a sad post, Warmglovesandsocks. 💐

You can appoint your solicitor as your executor so don’t let that stop you making a will. They might also be willing to act as attorney for financial matters only, but would of course charge for the time spent doing that. If you don’t make a will, who do you expect to inherit your estate? It won’t go to friends. At the very least you could leave it to a charity rather than it ending up with some distant relative you may never have met.

I can’t have a POA as I have no-one to act as a POA. My friends didn’t want to do it and told me to get someone younger, but I know no-one younger! I can’t make a Will either as I have no Executor. I wish I did have a POA and an Executor.

Our new wills arrived on Saturday all done, uploaded to the register and POA is in progress. Also paid for our funerals a few years ago.

We had wills that were about 20 yrs old and things change so we started again and although the DD's don't like to think or talk about these sort of things they are glad it's done.

I keep saying I'm going to de-clutter and I do get some bits done but the girls will have enough to do emptying the house so I wanted to make it as easy as possible for them to do what they will need to do.

It's a kindness in my eyes but some people don't want to face the reality that one day we won't be here to be the one doing what is needed.

Grandmabatty

Mum didn't appoint poa to either of her children and is now considered incapable of doing so. I've had to put the guardianship process in place (Scotland). It's almost a year on and we're still in the queue. Mum is still in hospital bed blocking

That's interesting Grandmabatty. I know we have a huge problem with bed blocking here, but I didn't know that people not having a PoA in place caused hospital beds to be used up - I hadn't made that connection. Must get ours done.

Ir sounds horrible saying this, but here goes: if my husband had lived a fortnight or so longer, I would have been financially badly placed, as he could no longer access his bank account, amd I could not legally do so. His illness developed so fast that he could not make a POA.
Fortunately, we had a valid joint will, and seperate bank accounts, plus a joint one.
I have made a PAO and pre- paid funeral plan. Perhaps my experience will change your friends' mind.
I do not think there are good reasons for neglecting these arrangements, only a dislike of accepting that we all will die.

knspol

It's one of those things that I've been wanting/meaning to do since being widowed and I still haven't done it. Whenever I make a new list of things that must be done it's always at the top but for some reason still not done even though I know how important it is and how it will make things easier for my DS when the time comes.

Why not download the forms and have a look at them. This will give you an idea of what’s involved. It will give you time to think about your wishes and Attorneys before you commit. Sometimes it just takes one small step to break the deadlock.

You could also give some thought about how to let your son know where everything is. Don’t leave the Attorney in the dark as to what he is dealing with.

Chocolatelovinggran

Did mine ages ago: sensible move, and a kindness to those left behind.

Me too. That was my thoughts on the matter too. My family will have enough to cope with.

It's one of those things that I've been wanting/meaning to do since being widowed and I still haven't done it. Whenever I make a new list of things that must be done it's always at the top but for some reason still not done even though I know how important it is and how it will make things easier for my DS when the time comes.