Power of Attorney - How much!!!!

Serendipity539

I'm 73 and my husband is 85. I suffer from Parkinsons Disease. We have savings, a mortgage free house and other land and property. The house is in joint names.
We have been quoted £995! by an Estate planner and slightly less by our solicitor to update our present simple wills, change the house to tenants in common and put both our shares in trust for our son so that should either of us have to go into care they cannot take the house. However, I'm sure I could do the necessary forms myself to change to tenants in common and this is free to do?
Our son is executor of our will, and we want to make him Power of Attorney,but should we also appoint each other as replacement attorneys ?
We have been quoted £450 each for 2 Power Of Attorneys by an Estate planner to do these, and a little less by our solicitor. However, looking on the gov.uk website, it seems quite easy to deal with it myself, taking less than an hour and costing only £164 each!
It all looks quite easy to do, and certainly shouldn't cost £1895, thoughts please

TBagpuss

When you pay a solicitor you are paying for their expertise to ensure that the document you end up with meets your needs and will achieve what you want it to.

if you are confident that you can do it yourself then you are free to do so, but it means you have no safeguards if you get it wrong. With PoA and Wills this is particularly important as of course any issues are unlikely to come to light until after it is too late to make a any changes!

Keep_pedalling

As far as attorneys are concerned, you should appoint each other and your son to act jointly and severally. You should not need appoint anyone to do this for you.

It sounds like you are rather well off, so If I were you would not be looking at ways to avoid care costs, because I would not want to be left with no choice if it ever came to that. Sounds you they could fund that without selling the family home, so why the need to protect it?

Browntoa

At that age the trust is very likely to be challenged by your council and you will lose

Browntoa

Read

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39589083

Browntoa

I've done financial and health power of attorney at £82 each myself by downloading the forms , if you make a mistake they tell you exactly what's wrong and what to do to correct it at no further cost

Browntoa

You can download and fill out the forms yourself from the land registry site and again fill them out

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hm-land-registry-forms

Serendipity539

I have looked at the forms on gov.uk website and they are quite simple

Browntoa

My mum did her own land registry forms , she's 84

Margot123

Download and complete the forms yourself. They really are that straightforward.

There may be a local charity who will advise you free of charge.
Bigger charities like Age Concern etc will charge you for their solicitor's time.

Serendipity539

I wouldn't do them myself if I weren't confident, they are really quite straight foward