Enduring Power of Attorney

reggie

My Dad needs 24 hours nursing care and will be going into a nursing home. He signed the Enduring Power of Attorney forms last year and we will soon have to consider selling his house. What do we do with the forms? I know we have to register them but does this have to be done through a solicitor or the bank or is it just a case of sending them to the Public Guardianship office? Thanks

msmicawber

Hi,

There's lots of information here which should, hopefully, answer your query.
https://www.enduringpowerofattorney.co.uk/

I'm looking into this myself at the moment, so please post back whether this is useful or not.

Best wishes.

sloughflint

reggie wrote: »

My Dad needs 24 hours nursing care and will be going into a nursing home. He signed the Enduring Power of Attorney forms last year and we will soon have to consider selling his house. What do we do with the forms? I know we have to register them but does this have to be done through a solicitor or the bank or is it just a case of sending them to the Public Guardianship office? Thanks

Has he lost mental capacity? I'm guessing so.

http://www.publicguardian.gov.uk/registering-lpa-epa.htm

An Enduring Power of Attorney (EPA) must be registered when the Donor is or is becoming mentaly incapacble of handling their own affairs.

The link contains the registration pack.You should be able to do this yourself.

harryhound

Thank your lucky stars that you are not applying for "Lasting Power of Attorney".

I am in a similar situation but having to organise this new type power of attorney.

reggie

Fortunately a friend of his advised him to do the EPA before the laws changed last year. Yes, his mental capacity is reduced - as well as needing nursing care he has dementia. It looks as though we just have to send the forms in - will telephone them tomorrow to see what they say. Thanks.

whatatwit

Hi Reggie, I don't know if you are going to have to pay fees for the nursing home, but have you looked into whether or not he is entitled to 'continuing care' where his fees would be paid by the local PCT.
I think the decision rests upon what sort of care he needs.

reggie

We have asked for him to be assessed for continuing care - we were actually advised to do this by someone who saw him and works in healthcare - we have been told he doesn't meet criteria. This person said we should push it as she felt he did meet the criteria.. He is self funding - I wonder rather cynically if this affects the decision...once he is 'settled' we will pursue it further. One care home manager - our first choice, but no spaces...said it's the first thing she would do..We hope he ends up there in the long term, but feel he's better out of hospital care in the meantime. .

barbeka

I've just had to go through all of this for an Aunt of mine. I believe you can approach a solicitor who will do all the paperwork for you but will eventually send it to the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG), or you can do as we did & do it yourself. There are info packs to download containing the forms you need from the OPG website I also found the Ageconcern website very useful. The OPG also has a helpline you can phone, as I had to a couple of times.

Basically you need to complete several forms & in a particular order & within 10 days of each other. One form is used to notify the person you are getting the PoA for, if they are likely to be upset by this as their understanding has diminished severely then there are other steps you can take but this is explained in the info pack. Then using the same form (sorry I can't find my copy at the mo to give you the ref num) you have to notify the nearest 3 relations of the person you are getting the PoA for (this can include yourself). The priority of the relationship is given in the Ageconcern info. In our case we had to go as far as first cousins before we had 3 relatives & if you have to notify anyone within a certain relationship you have to notify them all, for instance whilst I only needed to notify 2 other relations (in addition to myself) to fulfill the terms required by the OPG, because my Aunt had 5 cousins living I had to notify all of them.

Next you complete another form supplied by the OPG & send it with the original PoA to the OPG (with a cheque for £120), & wait! Notifying, the person you are applying for the PoA for, their 3 relations & sending in the form to the OPG must be within a 10 day period. The relatives you've notified then have 30(?) days to contact the OPG if they are not happy about you taking out a PoA.

It sounds complicated but the OPG have to cover that you are not taking control over someones finances without their knowledge or other relatives.

NOTE! we made a mistake when sending in the EPoA & didn't include part A which is just the instructions for completing the EPoA form. Now the OPG don't need this to register the EPoA & will process it quite happily but we found that the banks we then approached were not happy at all. I've got it sorted now, but it's been a hassle all for not sending in a cover sheet, so remember to send in part A.

Hope this helps

barbeka

Just an extra thought, if you cannot get the whole fees covered by the NHS, you should still be eligible for Nursing allowance (£100-ish per week) & we're also receiving £268 from the Gov called an attendance allowance. We weren't sure what this was & if we were entitled to it as my Aunt had carers coming into her house for a while before she went into a home, & we weren't sure if they were still paying for that. So we queried it & was told that as she was funding the nursing home herself she was entitled to this extra contribution. We didn't apply for this just started receiving it.

harryhound

reggie wrote: »

Fortunately a friend of his advised him to do the EPA before the laws changed last year. Yes, his mental capacity is reduced - as well as needing nursing care he has dementia. It looks as though we just have to send the forms in - will telephone them tomorrow to see what they say. Thanks.

Hi'

It is me again!

I won't hijack this thread as I am in the new LASTING power of attorney camp, though I did go through ENDURING power of attorney route, last time round, with my late mother.
In the ENDURING case I was able to get the form signed for the 1.50 GBP it cost me to buy it at a legal stationers on the way to the hospital. As the form was both a "Power of Attorney" and a "LASTING power of attorney", I managed to struggle through simply by becoming an "authorised signatory" on mum's bank account and did not need to do the registering bit. (This is probably a good example of why the system is being changed. Had I been that way inclined, I could have not only stolen her money but could have set her up as a conveniently dying case of identity fraud).

I also had a bit of a set too with the hospital (identity withheld to protect the guilty) whose first question was "Is she self funding?" and then proposed to pack her off into a care home. I wanted to take her home. "Families try this, it never works......!"
In our case it worked pretty well for 4 years - OK it took up (say) 8% of my life to organise something only a bit cheaper than a local suburban London care home deal. However as I have posted elsewhere, would you like to suffer with big holes in your recent memory and find yourself in a strange environment, where you cannot remember how to point the Zimmer frame in the direction of the toilet?

In current case of one of my mother's brothers, who is currently in better shape than his sister was, he has been assessed for "continuing care" BUT this could be because "their" prognosis is for a much shorter life expectancy. Unfortunately the nursing/care-home "they" suggested is full.

He & I asked for "day time" attendance allowance about 9 months ago but the assessor insisted on the full 24 hour rate (?!?).

As an old soldier from WW2 uncle is trying to apply to "The Veterans Association"
(Tel: 01732 773322) - As he has now been taken into hospital and "they" won't let me take him out, it is probable that he has left that application too late.

In conclusion, I think our social security system is pretty good BUT I feel in general that we don't do "dying" very well in the modern world.
(I also get the feeling that "no win no fee" is encouraging countries, with legal systems like ours, to practise expensive defensive medicine and the outcome can be inhuman).

Harry.

PS - What do I know? I'm just a bloke with a keyboard and an internet connection.