D-i-y Lasting Power of Attorney

getmore4less

Picking the right people is the critical decision.

If you cant trust them on their own maybe they are the wrong choice.

Executors and poa.

bouicca21

jointly or severally was what I meant! I trust them to confer ...

Yorkshireman99

frogeyesimon wrote: »

"Singly is seldom a good idea. In fact it is almost always a bad one."

Utter nonsense!!

Your reply suggests you have no idea of the potential consequences of singly in this context. If this is done and the person so nominated cannot or will not act then nobody else can. As the OOTPG website warns it is seldom a good idea.

Barbarella2

Thanks to everyone for their comments. I'm still following the thread and finding the comments on jointly/severally and singly most interesting. Will be downloading the forms this weekend and getting down to work!

Yorkshireman99

Barbarella2 wrote: »

Thanks to everyone for their comments. I'm still following the thread and finding the comments on jointly/severally and singly most interesting. Will be downloading the forms this weekend and getting down to work!

Be very careful with appointing singly as it can be potentially disastrous. Discuss the whole thing with the potential attorneys. Good luck.

frogeyesimon

Just to clarify the "jointly / solely" situation, the current POA forms allow you to specify whether you'd like a single attorney to act on your behalf or whether you'd like joint attorneys. In addition you can specify a "replacement attorney" who could act in the event of your primary attorney(s) being unable / unwilling to act. I would agree with Yorkshireman99 that only nominating one attorney is probably unwise, and if you wish to have someone acting in a sole capacity then a replacement attorney should be specified.

Specifying joint attorneys, in my experience and opinion, would be a pain in the neck, as every time you need to pay a bill or transfer monies between accounts would require 2 signatures, visits to banks and the like.

As an attorney you are required to keep records of all transactions that you make on the donors behalf. Provided that you do this and follow the mantra of acting in the donors best interests and acting in a way that the donor would have acted when they had capacity, then you are fulfilling your obligations.

As I stated in one of my earlier posts, I have sole authority, my brother is nominated as replacement attorney.

Barbarella2

I've got all the papers now from the Office of the Public Guardian, but I am wondering what are the pros and cons of actually registering the POAs now or waiting until either my husband or I are incapacitated. Obviously, if the POAs are never needed, we will have saved the money it costs to register them. But could there be other problems from not doing it now, eg the time it takes to register is about 10 weeks which could be an issue if urgent issues have to be resolved. Any advice please?

jackyann

Unless you are very short of money, register them now.
Sadly one of you could be in an accident tomorrow that might require the other to use their PoA.

sammy1234567

I did it myself, both the LPA for Finance, and also Welfare. It took an evening, and the website gives you examples so it was quite straightforward. I got a solicitor's quote first and was quoted about the same as you. It was much faster to get it done myself too - as the family GP signed them during a routine appointment. So we had them posted off to the OPG really quickly and approved within about 6 weeks.
We went down the route of having just one attorney, because that was the only trusted person.
Previously, we had a solicitor do the LPAs (a cheaper solicitor who charged £700), but they drafted it so that 2 people had to jointly exercise authority, and it turned out the two people didn't agree about anything at all, also they ended up living in different areas -so that didn't work out. The only choice for us was to have one attorney. I guess we were relying on nothing permanently bad befalling that person, and luckily nothing did.
The solicitor had offered to be an attorney, but would have charged for it.

Yorkshireman99

sammy1234567 wrote: »

I did it myself, both the LPA for Finance, and also Welfare. It took an evening, and the website gives you examples so it was quite straightforward. I got a solicitor's quote first and was quoted about the same as you. It was much faster to get it done myself too - as the family GP signed them during a routine appointment. So we had them posted off to the OPG really quickly and approved within about 6 weeks.
We went down the route of having just one attorney, because that was the only trusted person.
Previously, we had a solicitor do the LPAs (a cheaper solicitor who charged £700), but they drafted it so that 2 people had to jointly exercise authority, and it turned out the two people didn't agree about anything at all, also they ended up living in different areas -so that didn't work out. The only choice for us was to have one attorney. I guess we were relying on nothing permanently bad befalling that person, and luckily nothing did.
The solicitor had offered to be an attorney, but would have charged for it.

Having just one attorney is a really bad choice. If anything happens to them then the POA is worthless. With two people it is even worse. If you cannot find anyone else you trust then at least make each other attorneys.