What would you do???

K_and_N

Thank you for your replies.

Emmzi, this is also what we were wondering about POA. When I asked our solicitor, he said it is something the vendor's solicitor should have found out at the beginning but not necessarily. ???

Grimbal, We didn't think of asking for extension....it's a good idea. I think we need it even if we find another house.

K_and_N

Thanks, Womble.

Ours is also chain free and we thought we'd be moving in before the end of May.

Our lender hasn't reduced rate and the product we chose has non-refundable £999 fees. :-(

rakkibeth

I totally sympathize with you... Keep on at your solicitor as you are paying him to sort this out for you. The selling agent should also want to get this through as he will only get paid when this is done and dusted, so he should be willing to help. I have thought nothing of calling everyone at least once a day to try and sort out our purchase (and sale) and it seems only after much pestering and chasing, things are starting to move.
Fingers crossed for you!
Rach x

Catti

An EPA only has to be registered with the Court if the Donor has become mentally incapable. You say you are in direct communication with the sellers - why are they using an Attorney?

superbabe612

We've just got a POA for my father-in-law. It was supposed to take 10 weeks (we had a letter confirming the date it would be registered). Just before we were due to exchange on the sale of my father-in-law's house, our conveyancing solicitor discovered that the POA hadn't been registered yet (the same firm handled the POA!) so we have had a mad rush to get it registered - in the end it took 14 weeks. Apparently the Office of the Public Guardian has had a backlog - and they lost the originals as well! Don't rely on a POA - but like Catti said, is a POA absolutely necessary?

K_and_N

Hi,

The seller are an elderly couple and we always deal with the wife. The POA is for the husband. Apart from saying hello and goodbye, we don't really know whether he is mentally capable or not. From what we have seen, he doesn't look like someone who knows what he's doing.

Superbabe, I did some research on POA and found out EPA are replaced by Lasting POA in Oct 2007. Is the POA you got for your father-in-law EPOA or LPA? Since ours is EPA, does it make the registration process longer?

Thanks.

geoffky

some of you are jumping the gun...we had from march until 15th aug last year before we could move after saying we wanted a 4 week turnaround...its hard to do...hold on in there.

K_and_N

Update:

The vendor's solicitor told ours that the vendors are obtaining a letter from their doctor to confirm that he is mentally capable.

So...we'll see what's going to happen this week. We knew house buying is a stressful process but we weren't expecting this especially a few days before we were supposed to move in.

superbabe612

K_and_N wrote: »

Hi,

The seller are an elderly couple and we always deal with the wife. The POA is for the husband. Apart from saying hello and goodbye, we don't really know whether he is mentally capable or not. From what we have seen, he doesn't look like someone who knows what he's doing.

Superbabe, I did some research on POA and found out EPA are replaced by Lasting POA in Oct 2007. Is the POA you got for your father-in-law EPOA or LPA? Since ours is EPA, does it make the registration process longer?

Thanks.

Ours is an LPA - both for health & welfare and property & financial affairs. My father-in-law still has mental capacity but we can tell it is diminishing. We applied for both me and his son to be appointed as attorneys but our solicitor got my name wrong :mad: so only his son can use the LPA. We've since got another one prepared for me to act as my father-in-law's attorney if anything happens to his son, as a back-up. I'm hoping because FIL signed for it while he still has capacity, then we'll just need to register it with the Office of the Public Guardian if and when we need to.

I'm a bit confused why your vendor is applying for an EPA if it was replaced by the LPA 4 years ago. If it was signed 4 years ago the husband may have had capacity, like my FIL. So why the court of protection? If it's a recent application with/without capacity, wouldn't it be an LPA instead?

If I were you I'd ask your solicitor to find out exactly what's needed - do they have a probate department in the same firm?

K_and_N

Hi Superbabe,

Our vendor has the EPA so I assume it must have prepared before Oct 2007. It was never registered with Court of Protection. What our solicitor has explained to us is that because the EPA is not a registered one, he needs to know that the vendor still has the mental capacity. If he doesn't, the EPA has to be registered with Court of Protection. And he said the registration process could take 3-4 weeks....but to be quite honest, looking what's been happening to our buying process, I'm having nightmares that this would take a lot more than 3-4 weeks..:(

K&N