D-i-y Lasting Power of Attorney

weeowens

Worth noting that there is usually a lead time of about 14 weeks to get the LPA registered.
Plus once you get it make some certified copies & put the original somewhere safe. Then you can use the copies when you go to the various to register it eg banks & ISA providers.

sammy1234567

Regarding certified copies, the OPG stated on their forms that the Donor of the LPA could make the certified copies themselves by annotating each page. So we did this, and it was really time consuming and tedious to do ,as there were so many pages. However, we found that a financial institution (the Post Office) refused to accept this self-certified document, so we then had to go to the expense of getting the doc certified by a third party - we used the Post Office who have their own document certification service, for a fee (I suppose I could have gone to a solicitor).

So, it ought to be cheap and free to make the certified copies yourself. But in practice it's not clear if anyone else accepts it.

weeowens

sammy1234567 wrote: »

Regarding certified copies, the OPG stated on their forms that the Donor of the LPA could make the certified copies themselves by annotating each page. So we did this, and it was really time consuming and tedious to do ,as there were so many pages. However, we found that a financial institution (the Post Office) refused to accept this self-certified document, so we then had to go to the expense of getting the doc certified by a third party - we used the Post Office who have their own document certification service, for a fee (I suppose I could have gone to a solicitor).

So, it ought to be cheap and free to make the certified copies yourself. But in practice it's not clear if anyone else accepts it.

I cannot really confirm re the issues that you had with self certified copies. In my case I used my Mums solicitor to certify them & as I was visiting him re her her will & he did all the pages for just £10. Mum would have struggled to sign all the pages due to arthritis in her hands.
I had colour copies made as I thought it looked better though :-)

julia_lewis_2

Apologies for jumping in but having recently registered LPA's for my parents through the government website I need to know if you need to tell banks etc that there is a LPA in place prior to needing to use the document?

Keep_pedalling

julia_lewis wrote: »

Apologies for jumping in but having recently registered LPA's for my parents through the government website I need to know if you need to tell banks etc that there is a LPA in place prior to needing to use the document?

No you don't.

weeowens

julia_lewis wrote: »

Apologies for jumping in but having recently registered LPA's for my parents through the government website I need to know if you need to tell banks etc that there is a LPA in place prior to needing to use the document?

You sure will. You will have to take the full LPA or the certified copy to each & every financial institution that you want to have dealings with. In my experience this involved a 30 minute appointment being booked. I attended with the LPA & my own ID. The LPA was then registered on all the accounts involved, this being two in my case. A note was added to the pass book & my signature was filed. From that point I could use the account fully. Postal accounts will be more problematic & I have no experience of registering re those.

Keep_pedalling

weeowens wrote: »

You sure will. You will have to take the full LPA or the certified copy to each & every financial institution that you want to have dealings with. In my experience this involved a 30 minute appointment being booked. I attended with the LPA & my own ID. The LPA was then registered on all the accounts involved, this being two in my case. A note was added to the pass book & my signature was filed. From that point I could use the account fully. Postal accounts will be more problematic & I have no experience of registering re those.

But you don't need to do that until the attorney actually needs to act for the donor. Our LPAs are registered but I hope it will be many years befor anyone needs to take a copy to the bank.

weeowens

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

But you don't need to do that until the attorney actually needs to act for the donor. Our LPAs are registered but I hope it will be many years befor anyone needs to take a copy to the bank.

I see where you are coming from now but I was thinking that Julia Lewis was after using the LPA soon after registering it. Plus once it is sorted at the the bank it is one less job to do later.

Keep_pedalling

weeowens wrote: »

I Plus once it sorted at the the bank it is one less job to do later.

Although it could be a lot more work if you regularly switch accounts.

weeowens

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

Although it could be a lot more work if you regularly switch accounts.

I suppose it could but I can only refer to my own experience. My Mum was in her mid 70s when I sorted the LPA out & switching bank accounts was the last thing on her mind.