Warning about Lasting Power of Attorney

Who are you furious with?

We had this problem with my Mum’s first LPA. My surname was spelled incorrectly in one place (the form was completed by someone from Age UK) so the whole thing had to be done again. Thankfully it wasn’t too expensive done by the charity. When Mum remarried she had her new LPAs done properly by a solicitor.

Surely the solicitor is responsible for checking it's all in order before sending it off?

I don't really understand why you'd need lots of signatures anyway. Dh and I have done LPA's and the only signatures needed were ours and our AC who has the POA.

No Sue that’s not true - it’s a while since we did ours but we had to get our signatures witnessed by a 3rd party - obviously the person getting the POA can’t witness the person giving the power. I also recall someone having to declare I was of sound mind or something - my dd would never have done that?

Ours were checked before we finally signed.

The Office of The Public Guardian are useless. I had POA for finance for my daughter and she objected. Cut a long story short she contacted the OPG, they sent her a form, she filled it out and signed it with an X. The form was one that I would use if I didn't want to do POA for her anymore. They revoked it. 15 months on after The Court of Protection has ruled that they were wrong and it should never have happened.

So now I submitted a long lit of my expenses that they are going to pay.

We only did ours earlier this year and I think the solicitor was the witness. I don't remember anyone else being involved. He also decided we were of sound mind, haha!

There were no other witnesses when my mum did her POA either. Maybe the law is different in Scotland.

Ah I see Sue the solicitor was the witness - but for people who do their own, they have to have a third party witness - which is what your solicitor was in effect - he wasn’t witnessing it as a solicitor per se.

Sorry missed the Scottish bit - yes it’s all different apparently and still called POA not LPA. What I posted is true about England

Oh, I see! Yes, of course there will need to be a witness if you're doing it yourself. That's why we didn't do a DIY job, we did the lot when we updated our wills.

We are also in Scotland and updated our wills and organised POA at the same time, witnessed by a soliciter.

I had a look at the Scottish system out of interest - there’s quite a lot of differences apart from the name but the main one seems to be it’s a lot easier to be certified as sane in E and W ( don’t know about NI). I wonder if any significance should be read into that?

I wonder why the differences? Interesting!

My LPA was witnessed and signed by my solicitor today. The two ducuments.They see you one to one so that they can observe the sound mind. I am taking it to my first attorney to be signed by her and witnessed by her husband tomorrow, then it goes back to the solicitor to send to my reserve attorney in scotland, to be signed and witnessed again. Then the solicitor will register the two documents, I will pay and that will be it

I had my updated will signed and witnessed today too. All neatly done and dusted, to be tucked away into my file for just in case

But you don’t need a solicitor in E and W - our next door neighbour said we were of sound mind. Bless them - they’d sign anything to stop us ringing their doorbell in the middle of the night and running away.

Why am I furious? Because the bit which got missed was utterly irrelevant. Witness signed, with names and address in Section 5. Signed again in Section 9 but missed off full name and address.
Lots of names and witnesses because I named all 4 daughters as Attorneys.