New power of attorney guide

Primrose

Probably best to include the info as the witnesses usually use them. If your witness normally signs himself as John Brown just i,d just type that but if he signs himself as John A G Brown best to do that.
I think it,s more i oortant to get the names of your attorneys typed up exactly as they use them because don't forget at some future point if they have to act for your they may have to take their own personal identification documents into a bank if other institution to get a Power of Attorney registered and if there,s a huge discrepancy between what,s in the Pof A document and your attorney,s ID papers they might prove difficult.

For example, if your attorneys surname is Stamford-Smythe and you only type him up on the P of A document as Mr Smythe there might be queries.

loulou41

Power of attorney all sorted, signed and double checked. Will post on Monday. Very easy to use the online forms. I do not understand why the solicitor is charging a lot of money to print the same forms. As it takes so long to register, do you get an email to inform you that the forms have been received. Thanks

givememoney

I didn't know this existed till I went to a meeting of a club I belong to and a speaker was there.

My concern would be the bit where the bank freezes any bank accounts of the person who is deamed mentally incapacitated.

My husband and I are both retired and some years ago put all our accounts in joint names so it would be easier for the person left should one die, to access money.

My question is this, how do the bank ever get to know that a person is mentally incapacitated. Most payment go through automatically anyway so how would they know?

Primrose

This is a good question and the answer is that unless somebody specifically tells them, the situation could drift on indefinitely. As you say, many people pay their bills by direct debit or standing order now but if a relative did need to intervene when somebody is mentally incapacitated, they would find it virtually impossible to change the situation without a Power of Attorney. if somebody has already become mentally incapacitated, they would have go the other route of Guardianship, and from somebody I know who has had to go this route with a relative, it's a complicated and time consuming nightmare and much more restrictive in the way accounts and financial affairs have to be operated.


Sadly many people still don't know about Power of Attorneys, and even if they do, they leave it too late to do anything, thinking that it will never happen to them. Unfortunately it is usually a crisis at short notice like a heart attack or a stroke which pre-empts this situation and then of course, given the time it takes to draw up the documents, have them signed and witnessed and registered with the Office of Public Guardian (which usually takes about 8 weeks) it's too late and finances are already getting out of control.


We too have all our assets in joint names for this reason, except of course ISAs, which can only be in individual names.

Sope

loulou41 wrote: »

As it takes so long to register, do you get an email to inform you that the forms have been received. Thanks

You don't get any notification that it has been received but when it's processed everyone named gets a letter to notify them that an application for LPA has been made. Can't remember how long that took to come through but I think it was a couple of weeks.

Spreadsheetman

loulou41 wrote: »

Power of attorney all sorted, signed and double checked. Will post on Monday. Very easy to use the online forms. I do not understand why the solicitor is charging a lot of money to print the same forms. As it takes so long to register, do you get an email to inform you that the forms have been received. Thanks

The only clue I have had so far that the process is under way is that the cheques I enclosed have been cashed.

Keep_pedalling

givememoney wrote: »

I didn't know this existed till I went to a meeting of a club I belong to and a speaker was there.

My concern would be the bit where the bank freezes any bank accounts of the person who is deamed mentally incapacitated.

My husband and I are both retired and some years ago put all our accounts in joint names so it would be easier for the person left should one die, to access money.

My question is this, how do the bank ever get to know that a person is mentally incapacitated. Most payment go through automatically anyway so how would they know?

They would only know if someone informed them, but even if there was zero risk of that happening just putting everything into joint accounts is no substitute for having LPAs in place. What happens for instance if one of you developers dementia and just after they lose capacity you have a accident or stroke?

A full joint account strategy also limits where you can put savings. 65% of our savings are in S&Ss ISAs and there is no way we would want to remove them out of that tax wrapper, and the target is to get that up to 90% in the coming years.

givememoney

I intend to start this process.

Can you answer a couple of questions please if you have already been through it.

If you fill the forms in online, can you save them for checking through?

Can you amend them if you have made a mistake?

As they are pages long can you obtain them from the Office of Public Guardian without having to print them yourself?

Primrose

You can change the contents of the info you add to the forms as you go along while completing them online. YOu simply give yourself a password when accessing the website for the first time and can go in and out at your leisure adding information to the various sections at will The site will save your information so it is still there next time. I seem to remember you have several weeks allowed to complete the process, after which the Website will come and ask if if you still want to store the information. If you dont it will delete it and you will subsequently have to start again from scratch.

If you make a mistake or change your mind about anything during this time you can delete it or amend it on the online version as appropriate and it will save the updated version . You may find there is a facility somewhere for printing off the blank form before you start typing information in. I can't remember now whether this is the case.

People say you can complete the forms in a day. Yes you can but I would urge you to think carefully about what your future needs may look like as it could be many years before these forms might need to come into use so you need time to ponder the future and get it eight first time. It would be a hassle to have to redo the process further down the road because you had not paused to think longer term about some of the instructions you wished you had included for attorneys to follow

For example, if your attorneys are not greatly financially experienced and you had accumulated considerable savings which might have been amassed by the sale of a property because you had had to go into a care home, your attorneys might try to combine all your savings into one account for the ease of their administration, not realising that anything over the £85,000 level would not be covered by the government compensation scheme if a bank went bust.

As Keep Pedalling has mentioned in a post above, if you are a tax payer and have considerable savings you might wish to instruct your attorneys that your savings should be left wherever practical in tax free savings wrappers to reduce your tax liability. These are the sort of things you need to think about longer term and include in specific instructions for your attorneys to follow.

Im not sure if you can obtain a blank version of the forms from the office of public Guardian. You could try googling "blank forms for Powers of Attorney" and see if it throws up any examples.

I should add that if one partner is a marriage becomes mentally incapacitated and needs to go into Care it would be very sensible to split savings into two separate names if the person in Care is deemed to be self funding. This will protect the assets of the other married partner as the local authority would have no right to expect the other partner,s assets to be used if the funds of the person in care then fell below the self funding level.

badmemory

The most important point with a POA is choosing the right attorney. Someone you trust totally & with no financial issues & who feels the same way you do about how to deal with finances. If you choose correctly then the POA need not place any restrictions on what they do & will enable them to deal with any changing tax etc situations. Spelling out what they can & can't do is fine for tomorrow but what about in 10 or 20 years time?