lasting power of attorney

[potsandpans1234]

I'm desperate for help. My mother has been in intensive care for 6 weeks under sedation. We don't know yet whether she will recover or what recovery will look like if she does. This has been very unexpected.

I have Lasting power of attorney. I have been going through her post and realise she has a number of urgent bills to pay. I do not have the funds. With LPA am I able to access her bank accounts?

Thanks

Is the l.p.a. registered, if yes then I would call her bank, explain the situation and ask what evidence you need, it may be you need a doctors letter, proof of your I.d. and address, a certified copy of the l.p.a. and they may issue you with a bank card and a cheque book, that's what we got. Sorry about your mum. When you've spoken to the bank I would call the utility companies to let them know what the bank have arranged.

So sorry about what you are going through. When this happened to me the bank were very helpful and arranged for me to have access to my mothers funds but it took a few days.

You need to take the POA and two forms of identification to the bank. They send the information to their legal department and I think they contact the doctors to confirm your mother no longer has capacity.

Was there any particular circumstances put on the form when it was set up? When I had to do this there was no need to confirm capacity, I could use it while my Dad still had capacity as he hadn’t put any special conditions on the form. It was very straightforward to start using with his two main banks as I’m also a customer there so there was no need to prove who I was. Take the original papers and ID, each place seems to have a separate process for registering it, but if you take bills and ask them to arrange direct payment they may be able to do that faster than getting access for you.