A Will with "Guidance". Problems?

Sea_Shell

The problem with oversight, is that there appears to be nothing, or nobody, to stop an attorney from 'small' but insidious drains on the donors money.

e.g. whilst doing the donors shopping for them, they include a few "extras" that find their way back to their own house. And if the donor is not able/bothered to check the receipt/statements against every item, who's to ever know that that those items were not delivered and consumed by the donor.

I agree that yes, it is a very responsible/stressful position to be put in, for no thanks (in some cases), but also that I agree that there is no way to REALLY know how much "theft" is occurring on a day-to-day basis.

securityguy

Yorkshireman99 wrote: »

What evidence, as opposed to opinion, have you that LPOAs, are not widely abused? We hear on this forum every week of unscrupulous relatives plundering vulnerable relatives assets.

Similarly wills, of course: do we conclude that most wills are being transacted dishonestly on the basis of a few anecdotes?

One a week is about fifty cases a year, then, out of the many thousands of powers of attorney in operation. And of those anecdotes, many of them are trivial or the result of bitter disputes over wills. And most of the rest of them, pace your counter-assertion, relate to cases where the attorney is also an executor and a residual beneficiary).

Most people are decent and honest. It is misanthropic to assume that most, or even many, people will steal money from their (usually) parents given half a chance. A common scenario is people selflessly supporting their aged parents at cost to themselves, and using their own assets rather than their parents'. It strikes me as a gross calumny to start from the position that powers of attorney are operated dishonestly unless proven otherwise.

securityguy

Sea_Shell wrote: »

The problem with oversight, is that there appears to be nothing, or nobody, to stop an attorney from 'small' but insidious drains on the donors money.

There's not a lot to stop you from stealing sweets from supermarkets, either, and you aren't stealing from your (usually) parents then either. However, most people aren't shoplifters.

getmore4less

securityguy wrote: »

Similarly wills, of course: do we conclude that most wills are being transacted dishonestly on the basis of a few anecdotes?

1/2million estates administered every year you would expect a few rouge ones.


The framework(Mental Capacity Act) that oversees this are quite effective and in most cases the people are part of a much larger social care network that have the duties under the code of practice be they professionals or others like those holding an LPA.

It is estimated there are 2 million people that are covered by the Act.

If you dig around there are some stats but hard to find recent ones covering the whole country as the system is regionalised

The headline statistic that came as a surprise to me was there are around 16,000 DoLS applications a month.

troubleinparadise

getmore4less wrote: »

The headline statistic that came as a surprise to me was there are around 16,000 DoLS applications a month.

Presumably in respect of people, often with dementia, who need to be kept inside a secure environment because they are not able to take safe care of themselves or others when out of a care/medical environment?

The monthly number is a surprise - do DOLs have a time limit and need to be renewed?

securityguy

troubleinparadise wrote: »

Presumably in respect of people, often with dementia, who need to be kept inside a secure environment because they are not able to take safe care of themselves or others when out of a care/medical environment?

The monthly number is a surprise - do DOLs have a time limit and need to be renewed?

They can be reviewed at any time. And they only apply to people who are already in case homes or hospitals. And they may remove only certain rights, and are used formally today to do thing which were largely done informally in the past. So it probably represents as relatively small number of people subject to constant review.

Guidance here: http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/ataglance/ataglance43.asp

getmore4less

forgot the link to the report(think this is the latest collated annual data)

http://content.digital.nhs.uk/catalogue/PUB21814/dols-eng-1516-rep.pdf

muti applications within the year is relatively low at 16%(page 41)
maybe buried in there somewhere is the proportion of first time applications

securityguy

Look at page 10: the vast majority are people aged 85 and over. That they are being subject to formal DoL proceedings is a good thing: prior practice was for them to be deprived of liberty without any review. It's the same problem as RIPA 2000 ("The Snoopers' Charter"): most of the cases reported which are rather dubious (use of metadata for school admissions disputes, for example) are not new, it's just that pre-2000 they happened on the nod without any oversight. The passing of legislation which requires oversight is always followed by a massive rise in reporting rates, as previously unsupervised activities are brought into the new framework. There's also something clearly weird about the North East, probably down to different local guidance, as their rate is about double that of the rest of the country in every age band. Page 16 is pretty alarming.

Malthusian

Yorkshireman99 wrote: »

The OPG says that the attorney must act in the interets of the donor. The problem is, as I see it, that attornies are in an invidious postition.

Deciding when and how to encash investments in is an elementary financial decision which the average fishwife will be perfectly able to grasp, especially if they take independent financial advice (which they have something very close to an obligation to if they aren't confident in their knowledge of the investment world).

As I have covered above, it is perfectly possible for there to be no right or wrong answer. Which means no possibility the Attorney will be censured for getting it wrong, unless they do something unreasonably idiotic.