Too late for a POA?

[Tinkobell]

Looking for any views esp from solicitors and doctors on a persons fitness to give POA. My DFIL is very ill. He has brain lesions and we are currently awaiting a prognosis. His deterioration has been less than one month. He understands people but has lost a lot of speech and has short term memory loss. He is currently hospitalised awaiting chemo; we are keeping everything crossed that he can be brought back to us, he is 77. Are we too late to set up a POA? His DW our MIL, cannot access his individual savings for essential costs. Any views appreciated.

You can ask the doctor to do a capacity assessment, loss of speech is not a reason to not grant poa but the memory loss may be. If the doctor does not think he has the mental capacity to set up a POA then you or your MIL can apply to the Office of the Public Guardian to take these decisions. If he does have mental capacity then do set up a POA but if he doesn't want to then she should be able to set up a third party mandate with his bank to access his money. If you go on the OPG power of attorney website it has a section that tells you how to make decisions for someone who has lost capacity. I hope he recovers, best wishes.

Its called becoming a deputy.

Depends what you mean by 'too late'.

My experience with LPA is that it's both very easy and very hard - hard once you're past the point of no return and someone has been deemed lacking in mental capacity.
Now - how do you judge that?
Because all you need is his signature, in the presence of someone he's known for over five or is it ten years?
If he can sign, and someone he knows can show up and witness it, then you post it off with the cheque and it goes through in time, takes maybe a month.
Nobody phones up to check up and hold a conversation with him.

Now, your doctor. Basically it depends what they are like. Some charge around £100 for a consultation on this, and they will be looking to cover themselves by pressing all sorts of questions that your relative may on the day not be up to.
Not altogether sure all doctors even want you to get LPA in Health and Welfare. It gives you more power and them less. They never like that. Any medical cock-up or behind-the-scenes oops have we given your relative Gosport-style drugs, surely not, and any sniffing around by you, and you'll get the 'Do you have LPA in Health and Welfare?' response every time, your not having it is great for any cover-up they wish to impose, such as covert end-of-life care.
If you assert yourself on your relative's behalf you'll get some cow of a receptionist/ care worker merrily bitching about you all over your relative's medical file to defame you to the next person who gets hold of it. You won't know about it because you won't be able to see the medical notes.
Can't you just get his sig, get it witnessed, form filled out in right order, send it off?
The Deputyship may be eventually granted for Finance, takes several months, but Health and Welfare will never be granted retrospeciviely and from thereon the State is the decision maker for your relative's care, not you.

Thanks Holey & Newspaper. Interesting views. He can sign, just. He can understand conversations, what we've been up to, family news etc. Upto 2nd October he was signing cheques and hillwalking! Now he might remember or might forget who visited him the day before.....so it's a really tricky one. We are holding out on a recovery via chemo which would be amazing and wonderful if we can get him home again. You're views appreciated thanks.

Hi Tinkobell, I am happy to help however, it terms of whether this is 'a tricky one' trust me, it really really isn't.
If you can get that signature in the presence of a witness, you do it.
From what you are saying about him, you should have no qualms about it at all, (esp as until recently you say he was quite with it.)
This is the simple bit, getting LPA, relatively speaking.
Now, I should say that our experience was a tad different, as my mother had advanced Parkinson's and that isn't really the same as cancer of course in terms of how the State views it.
With cancer you go into remission or you don't.
It's either hip hip hooray and isn't the NHS wonderful, if not, well sadly nature takes its course. With Parkinson's, there is a grey area where folk can linger beyond what the State in terms of the local authority and NHS CCG is prepared to pay for, even if you are self-funding. That means - whisper it - covert dehydration programmes which the family won't be told about, to hasten their demise.
Now, you aren't in that situation.
However, if you were in our situ, it's a case where they simply won't let you have your parent back to the family home, because then they relinquish control. So it's a case of, you want to keep your parent alive by giving drink, you do it - by visiting the care home and forking out a grand a week for two years to do it.
In other cases, well, the authorities don't mind your having a relative back to the family home - to die. They just mind when it comes to having them back to the family home - to live.
But in either case - and particularly ours - the local Council is the decision maker for your relative's care. Not you, not once they are deemed to have lost mental capacity.
And often the local Council are the most corrupt and bent people you will ever meet in your lives - you really don't want them - or the NHS - getting their hooks into your parent.

I say all this because you still seem to be doing the 'going by the book' bit where you are being a bit too 'honest' and painstaking about the situation, like, well, dunno, he was a bit off today so maybe we won't get LPA. If you can get it, do it.

Agree with earlier posts. We used the priest as witness as he knew my mum and she trusted him. She had been meaning to do a POA for a while but kept ‘forgetting’. She then broke her hip so it became essential/urgent.

We were careful to get family members, I think you can have up to three, who sign saying they had no objections. Easy in our case as there were unlikely to be objections, even if her capacity was arguably not 100%. We did not use a solicitor.

My understanding is that as long as they understand what they are signing at the time they sign the POA it will be valid. So it is possible they sign it one day, but the next day they might not understand but that would be ok.