New power of attorney guide

dodger1

Thanks for the info, I'll come back if there are any problems.

John_Pierpoint

An alternative that I found a lot less hassle, was for my mother to simply make me an "authorised signatory" on her existing account, but if she is no longer able to create an acceptable signature, you would have a problem.

Though I held power of attorney (with my sister), there were one or two institutions that went so far round the houses, when asked to recognise our POA, that we gave up and waited for mum to die.

honey10

hi, we're considering a similar thing for my grandad at the minute, but we were told that anyone taking power of attorney cannot be a beneficiary in the will, does anyone know if this is correct?

Errata

honey10 wrote: »

hi, we're considering a similar thing for my grandad at the minute, but we were told that anyone taking power of attorney cannot be a beneficiary in the will, does anyone know if this is correct?

It's incorrect, they're talking rubbish.

bill48er

Hi.
Those of you that opted for going down the professional advice route on this one, what sort of ballpark costs are we in, including/excluding registration fees.
I've looked at the forms and have had to deal with all sorts of "industrial" type government application forms and I'm thinking I may dust down my old skill and try a "self-application" as my wants and needs are pretty basic, and I far as I've seen from the completes examples on the gov.uk website, it looks pretty straight forward.
So how much could I save myself doing one for me and one for my other half?

malid

dailybread wrote: »

I submitted my completed application in mid-April for the appointment of my daughter to act as my attorney should the need arise at any time and the documents were returned to me towards the end of June stamped by the OPG and ready for use should they be required.

I have an acquaintance who recently suffered a stroke and her family are suddenly in an extremely stressful situation because the poor lady cannot communicate or make decisions and never knew of the wisdom of appointing a trusted family member or friend to act for her should such a thing ever happen to her. So the family have had to set in motion the far more complicated process of application of Appointment to Deputyship with its ongoing annual expenses and supervision by the OPG. I know that this is not something the lady who suffered the stroke would ever have wanted her family to endure.

I agree with those who have said that far more publicity should be given to the wisdom of setting up an LPA!

I'd already told this lady's sister of my intention to appoint my daughter to this role and when she heard that my LPA has been successfully registered she asked if I'd help her with an application of her own. What has happened in her sister's case has horrified her and she wishes to avoid this in her own case.

I pointed out to her that I've made a very simple application with no restraints or restrictions on my daughter's power and that if she intends to give her daughter similar unrestricted power then I'm confident that I can assist. If otherwise - then I'd prefer not to be involved because of the risk of rejection of the application, as I'm not confident in my certainty that I could word any restriction she might wish for, so as to satisfy her and also have it accepted for registration by the OPG.

She assured me that she wishes to keep it simple just as I did in my application so we're going ahead and have ordered the forms and guidance booklets.

I have successfully completed and registered LPAs for two separate individuals. Both were of sound mind when completed but keen to reigister the LPA so that the attorneys could act for them at any time. A friend of mine was advised to have a LPA completed for her dad who was mentally capable but did have a lot of health problems and my friend has to sort out financial matters because of his immobility etc. She went to a solititor (unbeknown to me) and she was quoted a price of £600 + VAT + other expenses costs + 'unexpected' costs + £130 registration fee! I advised her to tell the solicitor NOT to proceed and I would help her sort this out - gratis.

We downloaded the forms; discussed them with her dad who was comforted to learn that he would not have to pay £600+. Forms were sent to the Office of the Public Guardian and duly registered. Cost - £130 + stamp.

You can do it yourself - if you can manage the affairs then you should be able to fill the forms in. As with all forms, check and check again before sending them off.

joege18

Just setup POA for my father cause of this thread!

durdham

Does anyone have experience of what do whilst you are waiting to be appointed as Deputy by the Court of Protection. My Dad has been declared mentally incompetent due to dementia and we have applied to the Court of Protection for Deputyship but are told this can take 6 months to come through. In the meantime HSBC have cancelled all standing orders and Direct debits on his Bank account including the one to his care home, HMRC have said they will fine him for late payment of his tax and meantime I am having great difficulty doing anything to protect him from these things happening to him because no one will speak to me as I do not have Power of Attorney. I have applied to the Court of Protection for an emergency order to enable me to pay his tax bill but this has been lodged for 6 weeks and despite chasing there has been no progress. How can I help my father in this interim period?

malid

So sorry to learn about your situation durdham.

I am not an expert but I don't understand on what authority has HSBC cancelled existing standing orders and direct debits. Maybe someone else can answer but I don't think that can be right.I can understand that he can't set up any new ones however I don't see how they can cancel existing ones. Ask them!

Registering a PoA took around 6 weeks for my friend. Yours is a different situation but 6 months does seem a long time. Why don't you ring the Office of the Public Guardian to ask. You could also mention the bank situation and see what they say. Here is a number I used recently to contact them used:0115 934 2799.

Good luck!

John_Pierpoint

It sounds exactly like the situation when someone dies.
Both my mother and my uncle needed to give me power of attorney, when they were struck down my "brain damage".
In the case of my mother it was enduring power of attorney, that required spending £1.50 on some copies of the appropriate form and getting the nurse in the hospital to witness it.
In the case of my uncle the system had recently moved on to lasting power of attorney, so we had to spend £1,500 getting the help of a solicitor to make the application. I think he must have been training himself at our expense, despite the acres of forms we completed and the other members of the family who were informed, it did not work out. Uncle died about 2 months later and the civil servants who were manning the new system were still trying to ask questions that seemed pointless 6 weeks later.
So uncle died and his last utterance I managed to decipher was "can you help me with my tax?"
Fortunately the will appointed me as executor - but I had no chance of getting up to speed by the end of October (executors were not allowed to use the on-line system, I don't know about those given power of attorney by the court.)
The penalties imposed automatically by the self assessment computer system were withdrawn when I completed the appeal form. There was no attempt to join up the still manual system for estate returns with the self assessment system, so it continued to go into overdrive with threats and demands for a further 12 months. I just had to feed the beast to get it to shut-up. That was three years ago when HMRC came within a whisker of total collapse, having installed a new computer system badly. I believe someone had now told the Self Assessment system that people have a habit of dying, they might even have told it that some tax payers loose legal competence.

I would advocate that all people in danger of death or dementia should open more than one bank account and have the money coming in going into one and the money going out from the other; but obviously someone has informed the bank that your relative is no longer legally competent.

All I can suggest that that a member of the family takes on the responsibility until such time as the court legalises the situation and the money can be reclaimed. Nine out of 10 organisations either have no procedures for dealing with this situation or the front line clerks have so little training that they don't even understand the terminology; however I have yet to find an organisation that returns a cheque settling a debt, because they don't recognise the signature.

John.

PS
It might be worth starting your own thread and attracting a following, who would make suggestions, any time you have a future difficulty dealing with the situation.
You might get some strange suggestions but a problem shared is a problem halved.

Good luck