27 January 2023
You can legally appoint an Attorney (or Attorneys) by signing a General Power of Attorney, which is a short-term appointment to be used only at your direction when you have mental capacity, or by signing and registering a Lasting Power Attorney which is a long-term solution which can be used whether or not you have mental capacity.
Your Attorney should be someone you trust. They can be a spouse, family member, friend or a professional you have chosen.
Your Attorney can be appointed by a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) to help you with your property and financial affairs (selling property, moving investments, dealing with bank accounts) or your health and care (speaking to care homes and doctors if you are unable to yourself). Your Attorney may be appointed to help you with either or both types of things.
Sometimes people worry that if they appoint an Attorney they will lose privacy and control. This note is designed to address that concern.
When does an Attorney act for you?
You can make a LPA at any time as long as you have “sufficient mental capacity”. This means that you understand the LPA and the authority you are giving to your attorney. If you do not have the mental capacity to choose an Attorney to act for you, an application can be made to Court to appoint a Deputy to help you instead.
To be used, the LPA has to be correctly signed and then registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). There is an application fee of £82 to register each LPA.
The OPG is currently taking around 20 weeks to register LPAs. So it is best to plan ahead and get the registration period “out of the way”. If something unexpected were to happen to you, after the LPA had been signed, but before the LPA had been registered, your Attorney wouldn’t be able to act for you until the registration completed.
A Two-stage Process
This is a two-stage process in that first the LPA has to be registered with the OPG and then it has to be registered with the bank.
Once registered with the OPG, you can decide whether you wish your Attorney to act for you straight away. If you were 26 years old and in good health, you probably wouldn’t want your Attorney to act for you initially. You would simply be ready so that if anything unexpected happened (for example a stroke or a car accident) then your Attorney could step up.
However, if you were 89 years old and were developing dementia and mobility issues, you may want your attorney to start acting for you straight away.
In which case you would look to register your Attorney with the bank. There are two ways to do this:
The Old-Fashioned Way
You can visit the bank with your Attorney and take either the original LPA or a certified copy of the LPA with you. You can then ask the bank to register the LPA and your Attorney against your accounts. This will allow your Attorney to receive copies of your bank statements, and to access your accounts.
The Online Way
If your LPA is registered after 1 January 2016 you can use the “Use An LPA” service online. Your Attorney can apply for an activation key which they can forward to your bank with your consent. The bank will be able to check that they are appointed as your Attorney and will update their records so that they are noted against your accounts and can access them.
Its either your choice or necessity
It is important to remember that your Attorney would not be registered with the bank until you were ready for that to happen either because a) you had chosen to give the Attorney that access or b) because the matter was taken out of your hands (for example if you were in a coma).
If you would like assistance to tailor the right power of attorney to suit your needs please call one of our trusted and experienced solicitors based at our Bournemouth and Christchurch offices.
Please note, this is not legal advice. It is intended to provide information of general interest about current legal issues.
