Enduring Power of Attorney - where do we stand on health decisions

8rian

My wife and I have the old pre 2007 EPAs - which seems to still be OK for financial matters but it seems to be no good for health matters. Does this mean  the authorities can make decisions and override our wishes when mental  capacity goes. If so the advise should be for all EPAs to be cancelled and the replacement LPA used. Strangely much of the advise skirts round this by saying the EPA is still valid. One further thought - if a LPA is created does that automatically cancel the EPA? Many thanks for any advise.

p00hsticks

8rian said:

Does this mean  the authorities can make decisions and override our wishes when mental  capacity goes. 

I'm not sure it's clear cut even with the more modern LPA in place. There are a number of factors that will come into play when making health decisions including if the donor made a 'living will' or similar while still having capacity, the views of medical staff etc.

Lasting power of attorney: acting as an attorney: Health and welfare attorneys - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
While the view of an attorney are taken very seriously, if medical staff strongly disagree with the decisions that they wish to make it could end up having to go to court. 

Keep_pedalling

I am not quite sure why you think your attorneys could not act if you lost mental capacity, that is when a EPS kicks in, I can only see this being a problem if both of you lose capacity and you have only appointed each other as attornies.

Personally I would replace them with LPAs, but mainly for the greater flexibility they offer on the financial side or if it would be wise to appoint other attorneys of a younger generation.

p00hsticks

Keep_pedalling said:

Personally I would replace them with LPAs, but mainly for the greater flexibility they offer on the financial side or if it would be wise to appoint other attorneys of a younger generation.

Also there have been some reports on this forum that as the old EPAs have increasingly been superceded by LPAs,  staff in some institutions are less (or not at all) familiar with what EPAs are and how they work.

I've found it a great help that you can now give institutions access to the new LPAs electronically rather than having to hand over the original paper version to them. And unlike EPAs, LPAs are registered with the office of the Public Guardian straight away - you don't have to wait until the donor is losing capacity. 

The downside of course is that it costs to set up the new LPAs - a minimum of £320 for a couple to do both types. 

elsien

Unless they are on low incomes in which case the fees may be remitted. 

Albermarle

The downside of course is that it costs to set up the new LPAs - a minimum of £320 for a couple to do both types. 

That is only if you are happy to DIY it online. If you employ a solicitor to do it ( which is not really necessary in England anyway) you could probably add a thousand Pounds to that.

jane_parsons

Which? magazine offers a professional legal service to check and it's about £90 per LPA on top of the £82 fee.  Because ours appear to be quite simple, I'm just going for the government version. But I am worried about one aspect of it all. There are three choices for how attorneys work together - 1. jointly and severally 2. jointly and 3. jointly for some and severally for others. We opted for option 3 as we have appointed our children as attorneys, but it means we have to be pretty exact about what we want to happen in different circumstances, and what we would like to happen i.e. instructions and preferences. It's a bit of a minefield, and if we get it wrong with poor wording or lack of clarity, we understand the office of the public guardian can overrule it. But I'm loathe to pay which? its checking fee, and worse, a lawyer thousands for what appears to be a relatively simple task. What do others suggest?

Savvy_Sue

We went for any one of our 3 being able to do anything, except selling the house. I thought they should all agree about that.

Albermarle

Savvy_Sue said:

We went for any one of our 3 being able to do anything, except selling the house. I thought they should all agree about that.

I thought it was more normal practice to appoint your partner as PoA ( if you have one of course), and put a child/someone else down as replacement ( not sure that is quite the right phrase but for you sure you can nominate a substitute attorney as part of the application process).

Savvy_Sue

 Albermarle said:

Savvy_Sue said:

We went for any one of our 3 being able to do anything, except selling the house. I thought they should all agree about that.

I thought it was more normal practice to appoint your partner as PoA ( if you have one of course), and put a child/someone else down as replacement ( not sure that is quite the right phrase but for you sure you can nominate a substitute attorney as part of the application process).

Yes, spouse first, they only get to act if spouse cannot. 

I might have considered putting them in order of priority, or choosing 2 of them rather than all 3, except that the eldest was peripatetic / no address other than ours; I suspect the middle one would like to work abroad; and the youngest lives in the Netherlands. So who knows which of them will actually step up if its needed!