Lasting POA

letiss7

Hi, I hope this is the right place to post a question about Lasting Power Of Attorneys.
I have an elderly relative who would like to register LPOA for health and finance matters and has asked me to look into what is required.
I always thought that these had to be arranged through a solicitor but I see the GOV.UK site has forms you can fill out.
The relative does not want anything complicated just 3 of us to manage the affairs when they are incapable of doing so themselves.  They are happy that any one of us can make the decisions so it seems to me that the forms on the GOV.UK website are fine.
Am I missing anything by not enlisting the help of a solicitor to draw up the LPOAs?

castle96

only their costs !

Keep_pedalling

As there are no complications, you do not need solicitors. 

Murphy_The_Cat

When my Mum & Dad set up their respectives POA's a rep from ageuk.org.uk was extremely helpful and useful in making sure that they only filled in the relevant sections, made sure that the relevant sections were witnessed & signed in the right order and that nothing was missed.

There was no cost involved with ageuk and they/I were grateful for their support. Setting up POA's wasn't as starightforward as it first appeared.

nanapop1977

Make sure you have access to an appropriate Certificate Provider, given current restrictions. We did our LPAs ourselves during first lockdown and initially planned to use our GP as our CP.  However because of covid, the surgery stopped providing this (chargeable ) service but fortunately lovely neighbour kindly obliged.
Solicitors had quoted us £1600 for the 4 x LPAs but it cost us about £250 (with low income concession ) doing it ourselves. 
The registered documents did take about 3 months to be returned to us, but I think this more because of covid than anything else. 

elsien

Double check everything included the signatures. We managed the finance one with no issues, but parent overlooked a signature on a page of preferences for the health/welfare one. The LPA was registered without that page and we were informed we'd have to pay the fee again to have it added and re-registered. Parent decided that she trusted us and would just leave the sheet with the LPA as a reminder for us so we kept it as it was. Otherwise all pretty straightforwards. We also had a neighbour as certificate provider. 

JGB1955

The maximum you should pay is £82 per POA , and half that if the donor has limited means.  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/power-of-attorney-fees

ic

I've arranged both health and financial POA for grandparents and parents.  The process is now very easy through the gov website, you only pay at the end when you finally submit the applications - so you've nothing to lose running through and filling everything in. 

With one of my grandparent's forms, I think we missed a signature somewhere - the office of the public guardian called me, explained what was wrong and sent the forms back - there were no additional fees to make the correction.  Note that was before the current website was in place - instead it used to be just a huge PDF to fill in and print.  The website now takes you step by step through the form and explains as you go, and crosses out the irrelevant bits for you.

Remember the form will need to be countersigned by one or two people unconnected to anybody in the form - so unrelated friends, neighbours or (for a fee) your parents' GP.

badmemory

I did both mine online a few years ago.  It was quite easy, although I believe if you put a lot of conditions in it can complicate things.  If I remember rightly, because I was doing both I only had to put some of the info in once & it was carried over.  There are easy things to avoid.  One is don't put that you want the GP to let the attorney know things because if you are unlucky a hospital will see that & say they are excluded.  Unintended consequences!

letiss7

Sorry for the delay in replying.
Thank you all for the replies, some really useful tips and insights into personal experiences.