PoA registration screw up

[BeaTwix]

I have threads ad infitium. Last year i had a busy time registering PoA for the elderly person I care for (EPICF).

I sort of suspected something had gone wrong when I sent the paperwork off to the attendence allowance team for registration as DBro seemed to be getting all the correspondence, but had nothing concrete. When you register with one govt agency it is meant to go across to them all.

It's all been confirmed today when I tried to sort out end of year tax affairs and a benefit claim that there was a fuck up and I have spent most of the day trying to sort it out.

Yup the idiots registered my brother and only my DBro as her attorney. Despite the request coming from me and us both being named as attorneys. He has never contacted them about her affairs.

Joint & Several PoA (so we can act independently of each other). Second attorney is my DBro. We get on but in but he is self employed and busy so I do the day to day running. Older Scottish PoA document so there is no code system in place - companies need to see the original. And believe me getting a replacement is time consuming and expensive. Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt.

DBro is named first on the document (despite being younger, and his name starting with a letter after mine in the alphabet). I'm calling lawyer misogyny from the original drafter (who is our family solicitor that I will jokingly take this up with when I next speak to him, if he is lucky he will have retired by then as next contact is likely to be when EPICF dies).

Regardless in order to register myself with govt agencies I've now had to resubmit all the paper work as they don't even keep a copy. Seriously. What a shitty system.

This required a second covering letter; outlining my request to be registered, why I'm asking again, re-explaining once again that the replacment PoA document from the office of the public guardian looks like a toddler made it on a photocopier but it is genuine and could they please just accept it and not tell me I need to send the original (like every other sodding financial institution on the planet). Then once this was done I had trek again to the post office (in the rain), and wait in a massive queue. I"m all Grumpy McGrump face.

And to add insult to injury this obviously increases the risk of it getting lost in transit and sending me back down the "get a replacement PoA document from the OPG" snake. That particular joy took four months, involved two MSPs, a CEO level complaint and a fee (possibly £35).

AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH

Oh B that's truly crap of them! This is all hard enough without other people mucking up royally. No advice, past possibly a stiff drink tonight. x

I phoned my brother to moan and he was about to go into court (it's his job) so I only got 3 minutes most of which was taken up with him laughing at my misfortune.

Talk about making things worse!!!

@BeaTwix sending strength and hoping you finally get there after all that.

Oh jeez, the Scottish system is so arcane. There is a spelling mistake of our surname in one of the documents, but as DPs did it over 10 yers ago and the solicitor has long retired, I just proffer the documents and only one company has ever noticed.

I am actually delaying photocopying the damn thing for one of DMs accounts as I just can’t face doing that and posting it. I figure there’s a lit of money to be used up if she goes into a care home before we get to that one.

Bet they charged you handsomely for it as well 😡
thry need to sort their cock op out without charging you.

I had difficulty activating a POA as my DP have a hyphenated name & there was an extra character space before one of the hyphens when it was submitted.
Luckily I work in publishing so was able to figure it out quite quickly.
I feel for you OP!

God it is all so unnecessarily difficult, time consuming and frustrating. The Scottish system does sound worse than the English digitalised one, but I have had several banks where there want a physical copy of LPA in person rather than accepting the code so in practice it may not be any better.

sending sympathy from the trenches of elderly caring.

documents all submitted to re-register me two weeks ago. I got an acknowledgement.

My brother just messaged me he has received the annual state pension update. So I guess the PoA hasn’t changed from him to me yet…hopefully this is just a time lag and not another SNAFU.

Oh, that sounds horrendous. I have just noticed an error in my address on my mum's English LPA registered years ago and wondering whether I should try and get it corrected, also whether I should say anything to the company I was about to send a paper copy to. Don't want them refusing it but also don't want them sending correspondence to the wrong address (it's a digit missing from my house no).

And yes to my name being after my brother despite me being both earlier in the alphabet and older

As an aside, this (sorry if you've read me going on about the this before) is why the registrar asks you to bring driving licence, passport, bank statements etc to register a death.

My late elderly relative definitely needed the "also known as" bit on the death certificate filled out, so we could use said certificate to tell various organisations that (not real name)
John Smith JONES
John SMITH JONES
John SMITH-JONES
(which he was variously registered as)
no longer needed their services...

My dear old Mum went through a whole bunch of name changes, but luckily plumped on her final version decades before she died ... She'd had 4 separate sets of names so would have run out of space on the certificate - I think it only allows for 3!

Well this week has brought two letters from the Pension Service....

both to my brother.

I guess there is a delay in updating the PoA information or they have screwed it up again.

This is a battle for another day.