Power of Attorney

Browntoa

helping out a friend here :-

Their father, due to illness , is becoming unable to write a signature etc so his wife is getting POA for his affairs. It seemed a good idea to set one up for the wife (his mother) at the same time allowing him to manage her affairs if anything happened but he has had a thought .....does/would this give him the abilty to ALSO manage the fathers affairs by default or would he need to be 2nd attorney (various family reasons why father might not at this time agree to 2nd name , hard enough getting him to agree to it all )

anyone got any experience of this ??

got the feeling they need to ask the solicitor and the answer will be "no it won't"

Edinburghlass_2

No would be the answer in Scotland but I'm not sure about England.

margaretclare

I don't think there is such a thing as 'managing someone else's affairs by default'.

DH and I have recently signed EPMs (enduring powers of attorney) for each other, with our solicitor as the second attorney for each of us. All this involved each of us signing each other's form as well as our own, our solicitor signed both, and all those signatures had to be witnessed within the solicitor's office and in the presence of everybody else.

AFAIK your friend would need to set up an EPM between himself and his father and another one between himself and his mother. It's a good idea to have a second attorney as well. The wife is getting an EPM set up between herself and her husband - how's that going to happen if husband can't sign?

HTH

Margaret

Browntoa

the husband can sign, but with great difficulty, the concern is for how much longer if thing are not sorted out

they are seeing a solicitor in a couple of weeks but he just wanted to get it right in his head

I suspected that would be the answer though

sort of prompted me that I needed to redo my will !!!

Biggles

Browntoa wrote: »

would this give him the abilty to ALSO manage the fathers affairs by default or would he need to be 2nd attorney

He would need to be named as a second attorney on the father's EPA to be able to manage the father's affairs.