LPA - be a replacement attorney or 'joint & several' - pros/cons?

[RedGrapesGreenGrapes]

Longtime lurker hoping to get the benefit of all the Mumsnetters' hardwon experience...

I've been asked to be named on the LPAs of my uncle and aunt who are elderly and live about an hour away. I had LPA for another elderly relative who passed away last year and was very grateful I had - so as the person who'd be coming in to sort things out if needed anyway I am all for it.

The only thing is they asked whether I would rather be a replacement - i.e. they'd have LPAs for each other primarily and I'd only come in to the picture if they both lost capacity - or jointly and severally.

My initial thought was to go for "jointly and severally" so that if one lost capacity and the other just got ill I could be useful straight away.

However I've only ever used the H&W LPA and I wondered if there might be complications with having the Finance one (in particular) as J&S such as bank staff demanding both attorneys on the spot despite the "& several" bit?

PS does anyone else get driven bats by the constant autocorrect of "ill" to "I'll"?!

Any even vaguely relevant anecdotes cautionary tales welcome...

"jointly" I imagine would be a nightmare for Finance because everything requiring a signature would need both (all) signatures, and I'm not sure whether banks would be prepared to offer debit card.

I haven't found any problem with operating "J&S" on my own. DH and I are attorneys for my father, but it's me that deals with all the finance. I haven't even needed to register both attorneys with the bank or building society in order for me to be able to deal with the account. But if I wasn't able to for any reason (which might be as simple as I was away for a few days), DH would be able to take the PoA document to the bank, get himself added as an attorney, do the necessary transaction, then just leave me to take over again when I returned. The attorneys do need to be able to trust each other - you don't want your life filled with arguments as to whether Mum really needed that new pair of slippers you bought.

I've been an attorney for about 10 years - over that time the banks and building societies have got much more used to them. It's gone from calls to head office to find out what to do (and in one case having to write an explanatory letter of why my father, who hadn't lost competence, couldn't come into branch and fill in a whole lot of documentation himself), to something branch staff take in their stride.

Cheers, that sounds positive. Really I just wanted that little bit of reassuring!

I work for a big bank and, as the poster above said, they are easy enough to operate under the J&S option. I rarely have more than one attorney registering in an appointment at a time and often the attorneys live a distance apart. We just register your details and signature and then you can do what you need to do - we do quite a lot of them so all staff in my branch are pretty familiar with them.

Thanks.