Lasting power of Attorney.....if you're going to get one

[Relocatiorelocation]

Then please get both.

It is absolutely heartbreaking to see people trotting in who have given enough thought to their parents money to get an LPA for finance, but didn't care enough to get one for welfare. These people then expect to just be able to make decisions by reason of being next of kin.

In the last few months alone I've dealt with:

We're retiring to the coast, so Mum will have to change care homes and come with us

We'd like to bring Mum home for Christmas but the care home don't think it's a good idea

We'd like Mum to stay in bed as she's getting older and frailer, rather than being hoisted out of bed daily

We'd like Dad to be discouraged from sitting by that woman and calling her his wife, she's not his wife, our Mum has died

We'd like Mum to not attend the in house church services as she wasn't a church goer pre dementia.

All of these requests have been turned down as the family didn't have the LPA, and there was no advance directive. It causes upset and really strains relationships. It would have been an extra 30 minutes of admin to apply for dual LPA, so please do consider it.

If you had to apply to the court, it wasn't for an LPA. An LPA is taken out by the person themselves when they have capacity. Applying to the court happens when the person can no longer make their own decisions. It's too late for an LPA at that point.

That is strange, you would expect to be granted both or none.

LPA welfare absolutely gives you decision making rights about care after a person loses capacity. It’s hugely important to ensure family lead in decisions. Even the small ones. If you don’t have LPA you can apply for deputyship, but that takes time and is more expensive. It can be put against the estate finances though.
In terms of the care home, you need a discussion as some of your wants are reasonable and some suggested would be really detrimental to her well-being. LPA is not something to use to resolve family disputes and safeguarding overrides LPA.

“We'd like to bring Mum home for Christmas but the care home don't think it's a good idea”. In truth, it probably isn’t in her best interest to come home for Christmas. You’ve no lifting equipment to help move her, so she’ll either be in wet soiled pads all day with increased risk of pressure damage and skin breakdown or handled inappropriately and unsafely to enable changing to take place. Maybe go to her on Christmas Day, if it’s important.

“We'd like Mum to stay in bed as she's getting older and frailer, rather than being hoisted out of bed daily”. This would be very bad care until the last few days/hours of life. Moving position and sitting someone out, reduces risks of pressure damage, muscle wasting, chest infections, choking, malnutrition, dehydration, acute kidney infection, pain. Hearing and seeing others improves well-being, social interaction can calm people with cognitive loss and help them remain engaged with the world.

We'd like Dad to be discouraged from sitting by that woman and calling her his wife, she's not his wife, our Mum has died. Not sure I understand this. Is it that the person before you is no longer able to engage or talk to your father, as his wife but is still the person he is married to? Do you think he’s wasting his life being there? That being the case, I couldn’t disagree more strongly. He’d still be next of kin and the home are welcoming him to participate in her care. It’s hugely important to them both and I can’t begin to imagine why a long-term married couple would be discouraged from continuing to show their love and support. He made his vows and probably wants to remain true to his word. That is admirable and affords him a structure for coping with the grief the changes to his wife have brought. The person, however unwell, however frail, is still the same person, still his wife and still deserving of his love. His familiar voice and presence is probably calming and reassuring, reducing stress and distressed behaviour.
if it’s about a family dispute, then involving the care home staff or using LPA to restrict well-meaning visitors is entirely inappropriate.

I did four for my late parents back in mid 2010s and even then they were £110 EACH. Mum got hers free because of some benefit she received but Dad got no help. We really needed all of them at one time or another before my parents passed away. Neither had dementia but infections can cause sporadic delirium so yes, I did need the health and welfare at times.
But always discuss with your parents what they want in advance, and keep doing it as their wishes may change. "Do you still want me to xxxx when you yyyy or zzzz?"

Can I ask a question … my partner and I are late 50s/early 60s with kids in early 20s .
I’m not sure I’d want to give the kids LPA yet , but would like my partner and I to be LPA for each other.

1. can we set it up now and then add the kids on later ?
2. can you put protection in place so that they can’t take over your money until you are unable to ?

If you apply to Court of Protection it is for a deputyship. They are often turned down because the motivation for an application is not always to ensure proper oversight of care and finances. There is, quite rightly, more scrutiny around deputyship applications that are court ordered than an LPA where a person donates authority when they have capacity. Deputyship are often granted to solicitors to enable them to manage finances for younger adults with a learning disability, or with an acquired head injury who would still benefit from family making decisions for them.
Generally the CoP would want to see a clear rationale as to why a deputyship was required over and above best interest decisions involving the closest family.

I think that really rude to say they didn't care enough. The example you have give show the opposite ! People arnt advised properly about these things or they just don't know. Why would you say that

Dad's just paid over £800 for both, cost will deter people.

@wohmum are the kids older than 18? It should be treated as a long term document sitting there waiting for the moment it is needed so if they are over 18 put them on otherwise put your siblings/long term friends on. They only come into effect if you loose capacity yourself so no one is going to clear your bank account. Like a PP said everyone should have one.

We had POA written back in the 1990s with the Will for my dad. When the time grew nearer, solicitor advised updating it to Finance and Health & Welfare as things had changed ( in Scotland ) . So we did, at some expense.
Ultimately it was worth it, as it gave us a voice with Social Care.

Its not the family who take out an LPA - its the person covered by the LPA. If you know this space you should be well aware of the process.

Not everyone wants an LPA - some people think it puts a burden on family, others fear family won't make the right decisions. It may well be they are happy for one aspect to be managed by family and not the other.

Some of the "problems" you cite would not be relevant to an LPA. I'm bemused that you think an LPA should enable a relative to overrule good basic medical care of an elderly person.

I'm a strong advocate for the system but everyone who considers it should get proper and current legal advice on the subject, not rely on randoms on the internet.

Health & Welfare LPA easy to do online. Costs £82.

I have LPA for my mum. But because she had capacity, I can only use it with her permission. So I'm able to pay her bills for her etc, but can't dictate how she spends her money, nor can I buy things without asking her.

So no-one can take over your finances in a decision making sense while you have capacity. But the LPA will allow them to communicate with companies etc on your behalf.

My mum is physically disabled and lives in an extra care facility, so my brother and I do her banking etc for her. But we don't make her financial decisions.

When/if she loses capacity, the LPA will revert to a POA that gives us the per to make financial decisions for her, but they must still be in her interests and not ours.

Gives is the permission

He was robbed. It costs £84 for each. So £168 in total

www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney/register

Sorry. £82 and £164

Some people are not aware to claim for both only doing my research did I know. I was only able to do the research as I was young when I needed to do this. Had I not grown up in a generation of technology and been an older generation then I would of struggled to find all the information I needed. My parents for example have no idea how to send an email or do a google search. It's not through lack of care it lack of knowing

I thought it would be loaded in the solicitors favour but not by that much! You're right.

Please do both, if you're doing one it's just as easy to do two. C. £80 each and anyone can print them off, read, sign and send off. They don't need a solicitor to add £100s.

Re the church services and the bringing your DM home for Christmas, I wouldn’t have thought you’d need a P of A to make such preferences known.

As regards Christmas,,though, the care home staff may be right. Against the care home’s advice, we brought my FiL (with dementia) home for the first Christmas after he moved there - reasoning that he’d always enjoyed Christmas with us before.

It was a bad mistake. He was anxious, fretful and unsettled, thinking it was his house (he had lived with us for several months beforehand) and he ought to be doing this job or that. Plus, for the first time, he started asking where MiL (dead 10 years) was.
Familiarity and routine are so often very important for someone with dementia.
Might add that he really wasn’t aware that it was Christmas anyway.

The firm isn't difficult at all. In fact your dad will have had to give the solicitor the exact same information as if her filled the form on himself!
All the solicitor would have done is put that information into the right boxes.

I get that these forms can look intimidating and people lose confidence in this kind of thing as they get older (I'm already finding that starting to creep in) but he'd have been better just asking you to check that he'd done it right, or to fill it out for him online while you sat together

Sorry for the typos!

It was £840 including vat and identity search, it's his family solicitor too so not just some chancer. I daren't tell him we should have done it online he was being proactive and trying to avoid me hassle but an extra £600 will make him feel a fool.

I've fact checked my memory. Never post while undercaffeinated. Affects capacity!!!

Back when my Ps did theirs it was £110 each person not each LPA. But that is still massively off-putting for many people especially at the moment.

I didn’t even think of doing one without the other. My logic if I’m doing one then it’s not much harder to do two. I didn’t actually think I would need the health one as much as the financial one but now my parent’s situation has changed and I’m so pleased I have both.
I didn’t use a solicitor.