Power of Attorney advice please

woodyt

Hi ,
My Mum and Dad are in their 80’s and both are not in great health.
Mum has a lung condition and weighs 5 stone and although she’s mentally fine, I really don’t think she will survive for much longer.
Dad is pretty doddery but is online savvy and deals with everything.
Do you think it’s wise for me to get a POA in place (if they agree) as I really have no idea on matters like this?
Many thanks 

Savvy_Sue

woodyt said:

My Mum and Dad are in their 80’s and both are not in great health.
Mum has a lung condition and weighs 5 stone and although she’s mentally fine, I really don’t think she will survive for much longer.
Dad is pretty doddery but is online savvy and deals with everything.
Do you think it’s wise for me to get a POA in place (if they agree) as I really have no idea on matters like this?
Many thanks 

yes, YES, YES!

Do it now. There's a wait of several weeks before sending the forms off and actually legally becoming their attorney. 

Also consider doing it for yourself ... 

Ms_Chocaholic

Defo consider doing it yourself, I did and it's pretty simple.  Post back here if you're stuck with anything and there's lots of us who have done it ourselves.

bouicca21

Yes!  And do it yourself.

cymruchris

It's useful to have - even if you never use it. Frame it as a 'safety net' rather than 'you want to take over their finances'. If you have POA - and it needs to be invoked, you have control over how their money is spent to their benefit. If you don't have POA and they lose capacity and for example need to go into care, their finances could be controlled by an external party who are looking after their financial interests (maximising what's used for care fees) rather than their personal interests. When my dad put his in place, the example they gave was a simple winter coat. If it's cold, mum needs a new coat, and you know she likes it to be made of cotton, dark blue in colour with white buttons as they are her favourite, but it costs £150, you'd be buying the best coat in her interests, for both her physical and mental wellbeing. An external finance controller would say £150 is too much, there's a brown nylon coat in Primark for £50 - that's all I'm authorising. Yes she'd be warm, but she wouldn't be happy. You have the knowledge of exactly what would be needed to be sensible in spend, yet to their wellbeing benefit. The outsiders would only consider the minimum needed to be spent to satisfy a criteria. (You couldn't go out and spend £5k on a coat of course - you'd also have to be 'sensible' - but you'd know their preferences more than any bean counter)

In my case, once the POA was registered, it was put at the back of a filing cabinet and forgotten about. (As in we didn't talk about it - we agreed I'd only bring it back out when it was needed). Then a few months later when my dad was taken into hospital with what began as a minor stroke, and ended with his passing, meant that the day after he was taken in, I was able to pull out the document (and at that stage I had known he'd lost capacity, but didn't know the outcome ahead) and began invoking the POA to gain access to finances. Most banks had me connected and authorised within 48 hours, a couple took a few days, and one took a fortnight, but it meant that in the short-term I was able to ensure his regular bills were settled, and was in preparation for his return home where I was then expecting to manage it on an ongoing basis, although sadly in the end that didn't happen. If he had returned from hospital, there's no doubt, it would have been needed.

We did use a solicitor, and if I recall paid £150 in solicitor fees, so if you don't feel confident doing it yourself, still get it done. And yes it takes a while for the whole thing to be registered, so don't put it off until you need it, as by then it's too late. 

lr1277

A couple of things to remember.

For the Finance and Property POA, with the donor's permission, you can start acting on their behalf if they don't want to deal with their financial affairs. You do not need to wait for them to lose capacity.

With the health and welfare POA, you absolutely have to wait for them to lose capacity before you can make decisions on their behalf.

It takes time to initially register a POA with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG). This includes the OPG writing to the donor to confirm they are assigning the POA and also the OPG writing to the attorney(s) to confirm they accept being an attorney.

The other delay is in registering the Finance and Property POA with financial institutions. This can in some cases take weeks/months. So best to do it straight away, once grantefd you may not use it straight away.

We registered a POA with RBS in March 2020 (a few days before lockdown) and the POA didn't get approved/accepted by the bank till July 2020.

We registered a POA with Nationwide in early May this year, and still have had no confirmation that it has been accepted.

Finally, some financial institutions want both the donor and the attorney(s) in the branch to register the POA, like RBS did with us. Nationwide only required the attorneys. In all cases, we all needed to bring photo ID.

Obviously my experience is different to cymruchris' experience. My  dad was the one who did all the finances on the computer and he is the one that lost capacity and also had many hospital admissions. So we had no idea about contacting the banks electronically because we couldn't decipher his writing for userID's and passwords. Sometimes he had 3-4 entries for userid and password for a single institution so we didn't know which one to use. Which is why we chose to visit a branch.

HTH

Savvy_Sue

lr1277 said:

Finally, some financial institutions want both the donor and the attorney(s) in the branch to register the POA, like RBS did with us. Nationwide only required the attorneys. In all cases, we all needed to bring photo ID.

FWIW, I think RBS were out of order to require this. What are you supposed to do if the donor is housebound or even bed-bound? 

Ms_Chocaholic

Just one final thing to add about doing it yourself, if you create an account here

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

You can start a draft POA, run through all the questions, then when you get to the end delete it.  You can do this as many times as you want.  It's worth it for a trial run (or several trial runs) so you can see the questions and research the answers you want to put.  Only when you print it off, get it signed and sent off, then registered does it become official so there's no harm in doing the above.

lr1277

Savvy_Sue said:

lr1277 said:

Finally, some financial institutions want both the donor and the attorney(s) in the branch to register the POA, like RBS did with us. Nationwide only required the attorneys. In all cases, we all needed to bring photo ID.

FWIW, I think RBS were out of order to require this. What are you supposed to do if the donor is housebound or even bed-bound? 

I completely agree with you, but at the time we didn’t think about it.
Back then dad was mobile so we could go to the branch. Since then he has deteriorated and now is essentially bed bound.
So in May mum and I went to the Nationwide during one of dad’s hospital stays.
If it becomes an issue I will raise it with the bank, if possible. 

Fortunately dad can still sign his name. So with one bank we are corresponding by letter and avoiding a branch visit. It does mean we can’t get the best/least expensive way forward, but it is what it is.

Keep_pedalling

Not only should you persuade them to do it, you should put yours in place as well. Anyone can be struck down though illness or accident at anytime so LPA should never be left until you are deep into old age. It might help if either of them are reluctant to do this if you let them know you are making your own as well.

The alternative is that you end up having have to apply for deputyship which is longwinded and expensive.

Savvy_Sue

Keep_pedalling said:

Not only should you persuade them to do it, you should put yours in place as well. Anyone can be struck down though illness or accident at anytime so LPA should never be left until you are deep into old age. It might help if either of them are reluctant to do this if you let them know you are making your own as well.

The alternative is that you end up having have to apply for deputyship which is longwinded and expensive.

That is (as you'd expect from Keep_pedalling) excellent advice. I guess the difficulty might be for younger people finding suitable people to be your attorneys. 

When the 'new' kind of PofA came in, only one of our boys was over 18, so we quickly did the 'old style' with him as joint attorney with each of us. Then a few years after that, when they were all over 18, we reviewed our wills and did PofA new style at the same time. 

My childless siblings are using nephews / nieces as attorneys, I believe, now they're all grown up. but I can imagine it would be a struggle if you can't easily identify suitable attorneys.