Lasting Power of Attorney Question.

If that is for 2 people, and you are getting both health and financial POAs as well as registration, I think that is a good price. We paid more than that back in 2020.

I do think it is a good idea to get a solicitor to talk you through it, as for some of the there are implications you may not have considered. Ours was able to explain about clients who had found themselves in seemingly unlikely situations (eg being unable to access the bank because of a skiing accident abroad that left them in traction) that having someone with access to their accounts alleviated. We would never have thought of that sort of thing, and there were other questions that I felt we benefited from having her expertise to guide us.

Honestly, it was easy to do myself. You don’t need special witnesses, just people who know you and can check you know what you’re doing, without coercion.

I did ask a local solicitor to check it before I registered it. He did it for free.

£1400 is outrageous.

Oh. Obviously I was lucky.

I bow to Doodledogs experience. She’s a very sensible poster.

I did it myself it was relatively simple as long as you do the signing of witnesses etc in the correct order i think it cost £100+ cant quite remember.

To do exactly what your solicitor has quoted £1400 for will cost £368 to do online. There is a reduction if you are on a low income and free if you're on certain benefits. Everything is explained online, maybe print out the forms and see what you think.
It is straightforward online, if it's incorrect it won't be registered so you can't really go wrong.

We also completed the forms ourselves online. In fact, the solicitor who dealt with my mum's will recommended we do it ourselves as it was so much cheaper.
We asked two of my mums neighbours to witness it and it was all very straightforward.

We did ours ourselves. The helpline that you can ring if you have any questions is excellent

I should say they were friends as well as neighbours so they knew mum well.

That sounds very high to me.

Last year our solicitor charged us half that

( welfare and financial POA for the two of us, including
OPG registration fee. )

It’s really not difficult to do them yourself. You just download the forms, fill them in and send them off. Only you do need to read the instructions very carefully, particularly IIRC as regards signing and dating. Any mistake means it’ll be rejected and you will have to start - and pay! - again.

We did ours at the beginning of the first lockdown, no problem.

Do it on line. Any problems phone the Office Of The Public Guardian who are really helpful.

I did mine online with no help. However, to avoid making a mistake or using the wrong words (legally) I kept it very simple. There are 'preferences' which are things you would prefer to be done and 'instructions' which are things you want to be done. I didn't put anything because I can put things like that on a separate sheet to be kept with the LPAs and my will. I can tell my daughters that I don't want to be kept alive on a machine for instance. The LPA doesn't specify this so they can do that anyway. You can go into a lot of detail on your LPA or you can put nothing and just leave it to your family which is what I did.

Same as Chestnut

I seem to be out on a limb with this (and thank you for the kind words Lathyrus😀). I can't remember all the 'what if's now, but I do know there were several as well as the skiing woman. We just wouldn't have thought about many of them, so if we'd done it ourselves we wouldn't know we'd failed to consider them, if you see what I mean.

The trouble is that we only do this once, and by the time we find out whether what we chose was for the best we are likely to be 'too far gone' to know about it.

I'm certainly not in favour of unnecessary expense on things like this, but with hindsight I am pleased that we did things the way we did, although as yet nothing has been put to the test.

Just posted mine - Friday.
Can someone tell me please , what happens next? I did read it up, but nothing like hearing from the horse’s mouth (sorry) - ie from someone, who has done it,

Another thing to note is that there is quite a lot of signing involved! The signatures do not all have to be done on the same day, but they do all have to be signed and dated in the right order. Read the instructions very carefully before signing and dating.

There's also a lot of printing and you'll need a substantial cardboard envelope for posting two or four LPAs. Each one has 20 pages, so that's 40 or 80 pages. A normal C4 envelope is not strong enough for all that heavy paper.

crazyH

Just posted mine - Friday.
Can someone tell me please , what happens next? I did read it up, but nothing like hearing from the horse’s mouth (sorry) - ie from someone, who has done it,

Mine were posted by the solicitor to my children (who are the ones with POA), and they signed and returned them. The solicitor then sent them to the registration place, and the children kept a copy.

I'm not sure what they do if they need to invoke it - presumably take their copy to wherever it is (the bank, hospital etc) and the authorities there will be able to check that it is registered?

We did ours through our solicitor so it cost more in money terms but meant I was not worried, and when DH could no longer make decisions I could do it for him. Our GP surgery needed to see the Health one, the bank the money one, but this was perfectly straightforward.

Thank you all so much for the really helpful suggestions. I'm really thinking of having a look at doing it myself, it makes it a bit easier that you don't need professional witnesses.
Thanks again.

Funny thing - DH and I have just printed out the completed online forms and have paid £92 for each of the LPAs. The Government site is very straightforward and helps with filling in the forms.

Just wondering what happens if, say, you nominate your husband your adult children to be your attorneys, but then the husband loses capacity (eg through dementia). I recall reading about an adult child who had a problem actually using the POA because of this sort of scenario.

Quercus

Just wondering what happens if, say, you nominate your husband your adult children to be your attorneys, but then the husband loses capacity (eg through dementia). I recall reading about an adult child who had a problem actually using the POA because of this sort of scenario.

I think this would only be a problem if you’d said attorneys had to act jointly.. I drew mine up with DH and DD being able to act individually so after his death, I haven’t had to change anything.

Thanks Doodledog.
I thought the OPG would let us know f and when it will be registered.
My anxiety is because I did it myself without using a Solicitor. I hope I’ve done it all correctly.
I’ll soon know, I guess

Quercus

Just wondering what happens if, say, you nominate your husband your adult children to be your attorneys, but then the husband loses capacity (eg through dementia). I recall reading about an adult child who had a problem actually using the POA because of this sort of scenario.

My husband is my attorney, and I his, but if we lose capacity that passes to the children, who can act jointly or severally.

I don't think about it much yet, as we have access to one another's money anyway, so if on of us got Dementia or whatever the other could take over and transfer between accounts; but if, say, we were in a car crash together the children could act in our interests until we recovered.