Lasting powers of attorney (LPAs) enable you to appoint one or more people (known as “attorneys”) to make decisions for you in the event that you are unable to do so yourself.  There are two types of lasting power of attorney; “Financial Decisions” and “Health and Care Decisions”.  An LPA for financial decisions deals with your property and financial affairs.  An LPA for  health and care deals with medical and welfare decisions.

 

Making an LPA does not mean that you will lose control over your affairs.  There are so many misconceptions associated with LPAs.  Letting these misconceptions stand in the way of getting these vital documents in place can be disastrous for you and your family.  You can read more about these myths and about frequently asked questions in Jasmine’s blog, “Why do I need a lasting power of attorney?”.

 

Having your LPAs drafted by a solicitor will ensure that:

• You receive detailed advice on appointing main attorneys and replacement attorneys and at which point replacements might be able to act.  This requires careful drafting and is often done incorrectly.

• Your lasting power of attorney is drafted correctly so that it can be used when you intend and need for it to be used.

• If your LPA is ever challenged, perhaps by disgruntled relatives, you have a robust, legally drafted document and your solicitor has invaluable case notes that help to strengthen the validity of your LPA at a time when you may have lost capacity and might not be able to defend it yourself.

• Your LPAs can be created and registered as quickly as possible so that your affairs can continue to be managed with minimal disruption should you attorneys need to act.

 

Jasmine Allen is experienced in mental capacity assessments and is qualified to certify the mental capacity of a client within their LPA (a certificate provider is needed for every LPA).

 

As Jasmine is able to act as a certificate provider this means that documents can be prepared very quickly and this is often important, for instance with early mental health diagnoses.   We can assist in providing documents urgently where necessary.  Please call us to discuss your requirements.

 

We deal with the entire process from creation to registration of LPAs so that your documents are ready to be used whenever they are needed.

 

In unfortunate events where a client has left it too late and is assessed as not having sufficient capacity to make an LPA, we are able to provide advice on what else can be done and to assist with a deputyship application to the Court of Protection if this is required. 

 

If it transpires that a client does not have capacity to create an LPA and you instruct us to make a deputyship application instead, we will not charge you for the initial advice or meeting relating to the LPA. To understand more about our fees please click here.

 

To read more about the importance of having a LPA drafted by a qualified solicitor please click here.