2026 Frugal Living Challenge

kayannie

When I did POA for a relative, her son & daughter had joint POA, but each could act separately if necessary. You choose if they can act independently or jointly. This was some years ago, things might have changed.

If both you & your husband want to appoint your children to have POA over your affairs, you have to make separate applications.

Auti

I have two for each POA so that if one is on holiday/ working away/ill themselves the other can act. I trust them to do what is best and they know me well, have told them of my wishes and written them, and they have the same outlook on life so decisions will be nearly identical if they need to act independently in a hurry.

maryb

You can have more than one. You can have it so that they can act separately or so that they have to agree - that can get complicated. You do hear of stories where siblings who are both on the POA can't agree.

Lots of information on the gov.uk website eg

If you’re appointing more than one person, you must decide if they’ll make decisions:

• separately or together - sometimes called ‘jointly and severally’ - which means attorneys can make decisions on their own or with other attorneys
• together - sometimes called ‘jointly’ - which means all the attorneys have to agree on the decision

You can also choose to let them make some decisions ‘jointly’, and others ‘jointly and severally’.

Attorneys who are appointed jointly must all agree or they cannot make the decision.

Again if you think they might argue think carefullybefore going ahead. Always best to keep it simple if you are happy to trust them. I went for joint and several. But having both a spouse and a son or daughter is often a good solution especially if the spouse is getting on a bit.

WickedLady4

Thanks all. I'll look into it a bit more online but expecting to go down the jointly and severally route. After all, they are both executors for both our wills!

dND

I named all 3 of my children but also went down the route of jointly and severally, mainly because if you select jointly only and something happens to one of them, then the POA is invalidated and you would have to make a new POA if you still could.

sheilavw

I did my will last year but haven't yet done my POA. Can anyone let me know if it is hard to do with one of the companies that advertise online, or is a solicitor a better option?

Thanks

Auti

it is not hard to do yourself and when you download form there is also a ‘how to’ guide - before i started i wrote down what i wanted in response to each question on a piece of paper then over the course of a week revisited it and refined/checked if that was really what i wanted/left something out. It is something to be sure about. Out of your two choices I would go with solicitor face to face - the solicitor who did my will also did certified copies of my POA’s (and has a a copy stored with my will) so each of my POA has their own copy as does my dr (electronic).

mamashaz

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82147973#Comment_82147973

There is absolutely no need to use a solicitor or an online company as they both charge excessive amounts.

As Auti said, it is not hard to do it yourself as long as you take your time and revise as necessary before the final submission.

Prudent

Some local community groups do Power of Attorney training. I am an unpaid carer for my daughter and was able to access some good information sessions via the local Carer's centre. OH is about to have a significant operation, so once he was on the waiting list we began his POA. He went via his solicitor and it cost £640 for the combined welfare and finance POA. This is Scotland, so I am not sure if the process is different in England. The document the solicitor initially produced was exactly the same as the 'sample' copy we were given at the carer's information centre, prefaced with several paragraphs of legal waffle. We asked him to amend it as we had already used that document as a template to personalise the POA to our situation. We handed our personalised version to him. It has now been submitted, but there is a long wait in Scotland just now for it to be processed.

I haven't done mine yet. I only really have OH who could act as my POA as my daughter and siblings all have serious illnesses. We know we do need to do it, but OH is wary of handling my finances as things like investments scare him. I know I need the solicitor to certify a POA, so I am not sure how that would work if I went along the DIY route.