POA how easy / difficult is it to do yourself?

Donor (not Doner!)

I have done it myself a number of times but not enough to not have to keep reminding myself how to do it!

I literally did some of it online then printed out and spread out on the floor to see what was what.

The reason why solicitors have a market for this is that it isnt very very easy. It needs some concentration but I have never had one sent back to me (have done 5 over the last 5 years!)

It is really easy to do yourself.i am not very tech savvy but i had no problem

Its not very easy. Lots of signatures in the right order and it takes a number of weeks to get authorised but print out, look carefully at the instructions and who signs what.

You will need a witness and I found putting no dates on the signatures form helped too until everyone had signed.

Remember you are the Attorney and Mum is the Doner. Always a good idea to have more than one Attorney because if you dont and something happens to you the whole thing needs to be applied for again.

We had a solicitor to do ours and when we realised how easy it is we did it ourselves for my parents & MIL. It’s a bit of a pain getting things witnessed & signed in the correct order but it’s not difficult.

@LoafofSellotape Sorry for not explaining clearly, @catofglory has done a better job. Your Mum will need to sign any copies to confirm they are a true copy whilst she still has capacity. I copied my parents originals as soon as they had been registered & then had copies I could send in the post when needed in the future.
The government website is really useful. www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney/certify

Just do it online and print it off. So much easier.

The attorneys will be each other plus one of our nieces, (his niece for him, my niece for me) who do not live anywhere near us. Do they need to sign, and do we need to have them in the same room at the same time as us and the witness who knows us?

They need to sign and date, and their signatures need to be witnessed. Their witnesses can be a friend, neighbour, colleague, whoever they can get hold of at the time.

It's important that the signatures are done and dated in the correct order, but you don't all need to be together.

When we did our mum's, as each person signed they posted the forms on to the next person, until eventually they came back to the person who had started the process, to send off to the OPG.

Very straightforward. Just take your time and read through it all carefully.

DH and I need to do this for ourselves. The attorneys will be each other plus one of our nieces, (his niece for him, my niece for me) who do not live anywhere near us. Do they need to sign, and do we need to have them in the same room at the same time as us and the witness who knows us?

I along with my siblings am attorney for our mum, and I can remember signing when I went to visit her one time, but I don’t think it was witnessed.

@LoafofSellotape I think what that PP was referring to is making 'certified copies'. You never want to let the original POA out of your hands, so when you need to send it to various institutions you need to send a certified copy.

If the POA is done by a solicitor, the solicitor keeps the original and gives you certified copies when you ask, at a cost of about £25 per copy. He photocopies the original and stamps every page and signs the stamp. With no solicitor, you will need to check who can do this (PP seems to say your mum can do it herself, I have no experience of that as my mum had a solicitor).

Nowadays it's becoming more common to send a copy online rather than a paper copy in the post, but some places will still want a paper copy. In theory they return this copy to you. In practice, not always.

@seanbeanmarryme if DM is not able to make decisions she can't sign the POA

If you Mum is still able to make decisions you can also copy the poa & certify as a true copy once its been registered,
There is certain wording that needs to be written on each page of he copy and then signed. To make things easier you can buy stamps from Amazon to save you having to write on all the pages.

It’s not hard, just tedious and detailed and yes, you do have to sign in the correct order, and line up witnesses. Ours was made more painful by the fact that we were doing it (for my parents) during Covid, everything had to be done by post, and the Office of the Public Guardian was drowning in paper and they were all working from home, so lacked the support to resolve simple queries quickly, and bounced things to the long queue for their legal advisors far too readily.

so it was slow but it saved us thousands in legal fees. It should be a quicker process now.

I did want to do this online as other friends had done but my mother refused to do it unless we were at a solicitors…
They stored the originals in their vaults & I got fully authorised copies of both the Finance & Health LPAs to send all over the place as required. We also did her will which was also put in the vaults.
It was costly, even back in 2015, but it all ran extremely smoothly, my Mum was happy with it all & it was worth every penny!

I’d add that I’m a bit further down the line (activating a LPoA that was set up about 10 years ago) and when I called the helpline the guy answered quickly and was very helpful.

It's very easy to do yourself. I have done them for me and for my parents. I did contact them though to ask to send the forms out as there are a huge amount to print out otherwise.

You need to do them in the correct order. They come with all details as to what order to do them. Read everything through a few times to make sure that you understand. Make sure the dates match up to the correct order too.

Dh and I did ours during the first Covid lockdown.

It’s easy enough, only you do need to read the instructions very carefully as regards signing and dating,

I certainly wouldn’t pay a solicitor to do it! Just take your time and make sure you follow the instructions.

Plus, you can add your own wishes to the Health and Welfare section. We added a paragraph to state what we would not want as regards ‘striving to keep alive’ if we were no longer able to state our own wishes.

I've just done mine via the .gov website. IIRC the person (witness?) who is confirming you are of sound mind needs to sign first.
The attorneys sign after that.

IIRC there can be a maximum of 6 weeks between the witness signature and the attorneys. I started mine at the end of March, got it all signed in order, posted mid April, got the draft letters back at the start of June and the final paperwork last week.

My tips. Make sure everybody signs in black pen as specified in the instructions, yes to ticking the box to allow the financial one to be used immediately and allow the attorneys to be able to act jointly and severally, otherwise they all have to agree about everything and if one predeceases the person giving the power of attorney, the whole thing is useless and will need to be redone, which may not be possible.

In England you absolutely can do it yourself and the website has clear instructions. You need one trusted party (not a relative) who has to explain to the donor what they are signing and I think who confirms that the donor is acting of their own free will. Did my Mum's several years ago now.