Simple living in the country - back to basics

themadvix

I've just put some washing out here and realised that rain is now forecast in an hour (when I was also planning on being at the allotment 🙄)

Agree with Karma - the POA thing is very organised of you and definitely something we should be thinking about (along with actually making a will). I'm a bit of an ostrich though!

Cheery_Daff

I've been considering PoA for years but never done anything about it. What brought it to the front of my mind was all this business with Mr Cheery's dad - he's still perfectly functional, but it's getting harder for him to have conversations with institutions and hard to sort things out sometimes.

I can see how it will be REALLY useful in that situation. However, he's not my dad, and me harping on about it will not make Mr Cheery any more inclined to do paperwork, so i decided to lead by example.

Also, in my work I'm coming across a lot of people who are finding it really useful to have done it, which is underlining the value.

Also, my own situation. Mr Cheery is quite a bit older - it's likely something will happen to him first, but if it's me first, he'd manage, but I think would really struggle if things weren't easily in place. I don't want to make things any more difficult for him (I mean, I'd rather they weren't any more difficult for me if it came to that but I have little control over that!)

I'm also aware that my parents aren't going to be relying on each other, as they've been divorced since I was 3 😂 They're also only a couple of years older than Mr Cheery, so I may well end up facing a situation of trying to sort things out for all of them at the same time 🙄 My sister lives closer to my mum, but has 3 kids of her own, and doesn't speak to my dad.

So I can very much see how a small bit of admin now will make things easier should a difficult situation arise in the future.

I'm trying to talk about it as I go along to everyone - on here, people at work, friends etc, because I built it up into something massive in my head and it really isn't.

It's dead easy to create an online account and start filling the form in - you don't have to commit to anything at that point, but you can read through the form and see what it asks for. 

The hardest thing is choosing people, but for me that was obvious. Mr Cheery as attorney, my sister as replacement if he's not available. I didn't make it any more complicated than that.

There are separate ones for finances and health, but you don't have to make decisions above just who will be attorney if you don't want. You can suggest preferences, or instructions (eg I said I want my attorneys to make sure I eat vegetarian food) - it gives examples of what you might put, and tells you what's not allowed as an instruction (because it might be legally problematic).

You'll need to have conversations, because you need names and addresses and signatures for 

* attorney (Mr Cheery) and replacements (my sister)
* 'certificate provider'- which is just someone who's known you for over 2 years who can sign to say you're not being coerced

You'll all need witnesses for signatures, and they need doing in a particular order but you can print out a checklist! I think this is what I did (but don't quote me on exact order)

* filled everything in, printed off
* went to friend's house. I signed, witnessed by friend
* friend signed as certificate provider, witnessed by her husband
* Mr Cheery signed as attorney, witnessed also by friend's husband
* sister came to visit - she signed while we were in a cafe, and we got the cafe manager to witness her signature
* I signed again to say it was all done

You don't have to know who witnesses will be in advance, they're just witnessing signature. Like dragging someone in off the street to witness a marriage, which we very nearly did 😂 

The most stupid part is that you're not meant to staple the documents, so there are a lot of loose bits of paper floating round, and as we did finances and health at the same time, we had to keep our piles in order.

You pay when you print it out, and the only timed thing is that you have to post it off within a certain number of weeks of printing, or they'll refund your money and you have to pay and print again. It stays on the system though, so you can just print a new copy. You can't make changes once you've paid, but if someone signs the form in the wrong place, you can just print and sign again. 

Lots of waffle, and maybe I made it sound more complicated than it was, but I really would encourage everyone to sign up for an online account today, and just create the doc and put your name and address in. No need to do more than that today, but you will have made a start, and you can start pondering about attorneys.

😊

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and for us, this is more important than wills (which we also don't have). We have no kids, if one of us dies, everything will automatically go to the other one.

At the minute, if I go first, there's no provision for my nephews etc and I would like to change that. But they'd not be getting loads anyway, because we don't have loads of savings and Mr Cheery will need the house to live in 😂 So it was more important to me to sort PoA out to make admin etc easier while I'm still alive 😊

Wills next (mine, at least!)

Cheery_Daff

Oh, and obviously go through the official government site...

https://www.gov.uk/power-of-attorney

rtandon27

Ladies - I'd highly recommend doing up a POA - Cheery you are absolutely right not to put it off!
Last year we completed ours just before I was suddenly admitted to hospital and I am so glad that OH had the final say in everything or the idiot nurses/doctors would have left me in a state I'd have struggled to live with! Having my loved one be able to make intelligent decisions means that here, just over a year later I'm almost back to living a full life! Nothing scarier than having complete strangers try and dictate life changing decisions!

themadvix

Thanks Cheery, that's really helpful. I've recently witnessed a friend's signature for her being an attorney for her parents', so knew that the signing bit was complicated (not quite as complicated as it actually sounds though!). It's good to know it's easy to start... I've added it (literally) to my to-do list.

I think you definitely need to get a will in place though - it doesn't automatically go to the other and I think that can be a huge nightmare for those left behind when people die intestate. The reason we haven't got one is that we can't agree on what happens to the money if we both die at the same time! Although I think we've probably moved on from that to an extent (although other issues have arisen!). It's something we need to do - I still have the Which wills login email in my inbox - it's become a permanent fixture!

My mum doesn't have a will as her dad died very shortly after making his (not in a foreseen way), so she's a bit paranoid about it. Not entirely helpful! She has written it all down, just not legally. I should probably broach the PoA thing with her (and her brother) too - given that dementia runs in the family and it was so difficult to get Nan to sign hers by the time they got round to it. 

Cheery_Daff

Thanks ladies. Glad yours was useful RT. I confess I agonised over that section, and originally decided I wanted health professionals to have the final say - I didn't want Mr Cheery in a position of having yo turn me off if the time came. But then I decided that actually, if he didn't want to make that decision, he could just go with medical recommendation anyway, so I've left medical decisions with him. Sounds like that was a good plan!

Vix, my understanding in our situation is that it WILL automatically go to the other - we are married and have the house as joint tenants. Is that not right? 

When we moved house, the solicitor told us if we died at exactly the same time and without a will, the older one would be deemed to have died first, and therefore everything would pass to the younger (me) and then on to their family.

Still, better with a will - but one step at a time, and for us not really a complicated situation in that regard at least. Wills do need more decisions (although most of mine is going to the hen welfare Trust 😂)

themadvix

Oooh, Cheery, you are right! Sorry, that was misleading of me. I was under the impression that while it would all go that way, that you'd still need to go through the courts, but it doesn't look like it (helpful gov tool here: https://www.gov.uk/inherits-someone-dies-without-will). That's quite a relief actually!

Cheery_Daff

Certainly makes things simpler! And means I feel slightly less guilty about putting it off 😂

Oddly enough, my mum just rang, and has offered us lunch tomorrow. I told her about the POA notification too - she asked if that meant I was making it for her, which just shows how confused some people are and why it's so important to have conversations about it! We're going to go through it together tomorrow 😊 

Meal plan is done 😊 I've not talked about it much, but I'm REALLY enjoying the Joe Wicks app 😁 So much tasty food, and it's the thing that has finally made me meal plan after all these years 😂😂 Not done any workouts since I put my back out running a couple of weeks ago, but I'm going to try a gentle one this afternoon I think. 

Now for a shopping list, a trip to @ldi, and I might treat myself to a little cafe trip, whether Mr Cheery feels up to coming with me or not 😊 I do like a plotting and scheming session in a cafe. I've got a few batch cooking things on my meal plan, a couple that want the hay box (which currently has drills etc piled on top of it 🙄), and I want to make a couple of snacks to take to my sister's tomorrow 😊

badmemory

I think I have already said on here what a good idea the POA is.  Fortunately my mother did one just before she deteriorated & when I say just I mean about 6 months.  She broke her hip & it was frankly downhill all the way.  Despite her being late 80s the hospital did not want to tell us anything about what was going on.  Their attitude changed as soon as I waved the POA in their faces.  In a way we were very lucky because when she signed she was totally with it, 6 months later definitely not thankfully we had had a doctor involved.  It could have been sticky, so do it now.  I've had mine almost 8 years.  I am rapidly getting the opinion that you should get one along with the right to vote.  The trouble with that would be that so many people would never get round to updating them properly.