What happens with no LPoA?

[TautouRose]

My parents have both had serious medical events where they were unconcious or incapacitated in recent months.

In the summer we (siblings & parents) had a serious discussion about how they should get LPAs in place ASAP. Since then we have had multiple "reminder" discussions where they say they want to do it, but have to do more research / don't have the time / are too stressed / it's too emotional / the technology is beyond them.

During one of the medical events us siblings were able to get updates when calling the hospital with no problem whatsoever, and as I understand it, medical staff are obliged to listen to family's wishes, but don't have to "obey" when there is no LPA.

It's looking like we won't get the LPAs at the moment. How bad is it going to be for them and us if things get worse?

Have they both lost capacity already? If so health wise the team looking after them will make decisions in their best interest and I think social workers get involved for the financial side of things. Or you can get a court appointed deputy but that can take ages and be expensive

if they still have capacity to decide who they would like to act on their behalf if they do loose the ability (not everyone does) then get them sorted asap

The court will appoint a deputy to look after their finances (if they have both lost capacity already).

Social services and the court will make decisions regarding their care.

Doctors will consult you as next of kin with their treatment but you won't have legal standing to make certain decisions.

Social workers will make social care decisions for them. If they've both lost capacity, I would advise getting the ball rolling for deputyship asap .

Thank you for your replies - I have updated my OP after being trigger happy!

If your parent/parents still have capacity, talk to them about the importance of an LPA. If they haven't got capacity then a social worker will make a Best Interests decision. But if they need their house sold to ay for a care home, for example, it needs to go through the Court of Protection which costs a fortune and is a very lengthy process.

AgeUK have lots of information on their website

You won’t be able to pay their bills,shopping, council tax, anything - life grinds to a halt until the court takes action which takes about a year.

So get ready for CCJs and the gas being cut off.

Social workers won’t do much, if anything for their best interests.

They can either chose to have someone they know and trust to make decisions for them who may know what their preferences are regarding things like life sustaining treatment.

Or instead have you go through a lengthy expensive process to go through the courts to sort everything if they lose capacity which will have to happen. You may not be able to be the deputy. So its up to them if they prefer you or social services/the court and doctors making decisons for them.

Also if they have joint bank accounts, most banks require both signatories to have capacity otherwise the bank is frozen.

That's how Id put it to them.

It's so frustrating. They are fully capable at the moment (outside of medical events) but that could easily change. Both are intelligent and mostly well-informed, so cannot be unaware of what could happen.

I'm in the middle of this at the moment, I don't have PoA.
My DM is in hospital and I'm next of kin, the problem is going to be continued care, when she is well enough for the next stage and is likely to need to fund her own care.

To be honest I'm going to have to see what happens, she might be just about ok to sign a PoA... She might not?
Most of her bills are direct debit and I can cover a couple of months for anything else.

Well it's up to them, which is annoying as you will be the one who has to do all the work sorting them out if they lose capacity. They would be getting LPAs for your benefit to make your life easier. And also of course if they did lose capacity eg by being in a coma, its in their interests to give you the power to make sure they have a life to come back to ie mortgage and bills continued to be paid.

Get a professional to do the LPAs as they can do a capacity test to make sure shes able to get one prepared. Then you have a 6-8 week wait while they are registered if you are lucky. The fastest the OPG can register them is just over 4 weeks and you have to have a good reason why it needs expiditing. Eg near death.

My mother did her LPA with a solicitor. I know you don't need to, but sitting with a solicitor and talking through the options gave my mother the confidence she was 'getting it right'.

Which was just as well, because three years later she developed dementia, and I spent ten years using the LPA on her behalf.

If your parents don't have one, it will be very difficult. Someone (either social services or you) will have to take out a deputyship for their financial affairs, which will take months to come through and is more onerous to use. Deputyships are very rarely granted for health and welfare.

Social workers will make social care decisions in their best interests, but cannot access their bank accounts to pay for their shopping/bills.

If they fail to sign LPAs before they lose capacity, you can get a head-start on court order by registering as a Deputy yourself (at least in England and Wales, different in Scotland and NI):

https://www.gov.uk/become-deputy

However, it is a looooong process. I had to go through it all for my DF.

(I know this isn't the question, but for anyone reading this, it's good to put an LPA in place for yourself too while you're in good health and sound mind, along with a will. Saves relatives stress later in life!)

My mum didn’t have a PoA, and although this was a bit of a nuisance, it wasn’t quite as dire as some posters’ experiences above.

Medical decisions: health professionals will make the decisions regardless of whether there’s a PoA or not. They’ll pay lip service to consulting relatives, but they make the decisions.

Care: hospital social worker was great and discussed everything with us fully. Fortunately, we were in broad agreement about next steps so there was no conflict.

Finances: my brother used to manage mum’s online banking for her (at her request) long before she lost capacity, so this wasn’t a problem. We had to apply for Deputyship in order to sell her house. This took about 4 months to come through and social services paid for her care in the meantime. There was a cost involved in applying. I can’t remember how much but it certainly wasn’t “a fortune”.

You or another of your siblings should make an appointment at a solicitors (or if your parents have a solicitor they already use, make an appointment there). Tell your parents when it is, pick them up and take them to the solicitors to have both health and finance LPAs drawn up for each of them. It's not about technology being "too difficult" or any of their other excuses. If they have capacity, surely they will not want to dump their children into the mess that having no financial LPA in place will mean. They can put each other on along with all their children as joint attorneys if they're worried that you're all going to abuse them in some way.

If a person is deemed to have 'capacity to make their own decisions' just that.

If they have a medical episode and do not have capacity at any point, the medical experts will decide what is in the person's best interests.

If it's something like refusing to go into care/not taking care of themselves, after multiple incidents, medical admissions etc, Social Services will intervene.

Social Services (if this is still correct) can apply for a 'Deprivation of Liberty' order (DOLs) if they need to.

Throughout any scenario, the family are/should be contacted for their viewpoint on the situation.

There are 2 types of LPA's: Finance and Medical. You can arrange them through a Solicitor or complete the paperwork yourself and have it certified.

It's difficult.

It's so very important to have these decisions made because siblings/family can suddenly turn and become highly obstructive.

My Dad died from cancer and my sister became highly obstructive to his care at certain points which thankfully his palliative care team were on the ball with immediately and had him moved to a hospice (she took advantage of my having a cold and decided to withdraw him from morphine as she believed it was that that was making him so unwell, not the liver cancer). I'll never forgive her for being the reason why he couldn't stay at home as he so desperately wanted.

You can download the forms and complete them yourself. Then get your parents to sign with the appropriate witnesses and certificate providers.

It's mostly just filling out names and addresses and box ticking.

The forms are a bit confusing to fill in, but once you've got your head round who can and needs to sign which bit and in what order, it's not too arduous to do. Anything I wasn't sure over I did an online search. There's a lot of advice about them online beyond the official guide.

I found it easier to type them online and then print the forms for signatures, but you can complete them by hand if you prefer.

You don't need a solicitor to do them, but if you get them wrong you would have to pay again to resubmit.

Did your brother just use your mum's login details? A friend of mine was doing that for her father, but because she lives in a different country the bank found out and put a stop to it, presumably by some automatic IP check or something.

If your parents have the means, instruct a solicitor to do the POAs. A lot of firms will charge a fixed fee for doing this. It is very doable to do the forms yourself (I did the forms for my parents) but on reflection would have been quicker and more straightforward to get a professional to do it.

It took three years to persuade my father to put POA in place, despite being advised of the same many years ago when my parents did their wills. Eventually he signed them earlier this year and they were registered very quickly. We are incredibly lucky as no sooner had they been registered he became very ill and it is now deemed he has lost capacity.

You can't legally manage someone's money on an informal basis once they have lost capacity. You must get Deputyship.

Age UK will give you the forms and help you to fill them in. It costs about £80. I strongly advise you to get on with it because once you have a third ( state) party taking control of everything it will be completely out of your hands.

DH and I have already done ours, sorted the wills, life insurance, letters of wishes, death box done and electronic copies of everything sent to the dc. I don't want them to have any of this to sort out when dealing with illness or dementia.

It is so very difficult to know what is the best.

When one of my relatives was passing away (and I never knew how long it can actually take to 'pass away') we were told the end of life drugs/morphine can actually prolong their agony but everyone is different. There's a distinct medical line on when to withdraw the drugs when they fall unconscious. I do think you can be told different things by different people though.

Like you, the family were 'at odds' with each other despite the person who was passing away having said for multiple years that they did not want to pass away at home because of the lasting memories for the others to have to live with (they had experienced similar themselves).

There was basically a 50/50 family split on whether the person should pass away in hospital or at home.

Some of us thought the people who wanted the person to pass away at home were wanting it for convenience for themselves as they felt obligated to be at the hospital bedside. It definitely makes or breaks relationships.

My 'vote' was for hospital as I thought they can administer any drugs needed instantly whereas if the person was at home, you needed to phone a 24-hour hotline to ask a Nurse to visit. The deciding factor was when I 'drilled down' questioning this, I found out the 24-hour hotline was only manned 9am-5pm and was an answerphone that was monitored every hour out of hours. I thought to call that a '24-hour hotline' was pathetic.

In the end, the person passed away in hospital as the medical team said they were too ill to be moved. (I have to say the hospital were pushing for them to be discharged home and there was no availability at the hospice).

It's difficult. 💐