Benificiary/executor problem please

Marcon

EnfieldP17 wrote: »

Not sure how I missed the "Wills" forum, should have been obvious.

All questions are easy when you know the answer - and the same principle applies to a huge website like this with many subsections. If you don't know a particular forum exists, you probably won't go looking for it! Happily most people here are helpful enough to point you in the right direction...

Worth a chat with someone like AgeUK, who are doubtless consulted on just your sort of situation on a regular basis.

Malthusian

See a solicitor who is a member of STEP. If you have no family and no friends whom you would trust as attorney then a solicitor as "professional attorney" is the next best thing. It is expensive but better than nothing, and less expensive than not appointing one.

It would also be worth considering taking advice from a local Independent Financial Adviser, even if you have no wish to do anything with your savings. If / when your solicitor takes over your finances they will almost certainly consult a professional financial adviser on how to manage your assets. You may prefer this to be your own choice rather than theirs.

Given past examples that I have seen, I am willing to involve a solicitor but not to hand over total control.

You can't legally hand over total control. As long as you are compos mentis then you can revoke a Power of Attorney at any time and countermand anything your attorney has done on your behalf. That means you are the one in control, even if your Attorney is doing all the thinking and signing all the paperwork.

If you have lost control of your own affairs due to incapacity, then someone is going to take control and you may as well be the person that decides who that is.

Attorneys are bound by very strict legal requirements so in that sense no attorney has total control. They cannot legally, for example, take all your money and flee to the Bahamas. Nor is it likely that they would, as if you wanted to steal all someone's money and flee to the Bahamas, there are much easier and better ways of doing it than becoming someone's Attorney and defrauding them.

EnfieldP17

Thank you all for the replies so far.
If anyone is going to " flee to the Bahamas " it will be ME!

EnfieldP17

Many thanks to you all for the replies.
No further input required.