Whilst the prospect of losing the ability to make important decisions for yourself is daunting to consider, it is important to ensure that your finances and wellbeing are protected if you were to ever lose capacity. Putting a Lasting Power of Attorney in place allows for individuals to deal with your assets if you lose capacity, as well as handling any of your health and welfare matters. If you aren’t sure who best to pick to be your LPA you can always pick a solicitor.
Topics to be answered in this article
What is LPA?
A Lasting Power of Attorney is a legal document that allows a person to appoint trusted individuals (known as an attorney) to make important decisions about their health and welfare and/or their property and finances on their behalf.
Learn more: Everything you need to know about Lasting Powers of Attorney
What are the skills and attributes of a suitable attorney?
You can choose anyone you like to be appointed as your Attorney, as long as they are over the age of 18. Your attorney’s should be people that you trust implicitly. Your Attorney’s will be able to make decisions on your behalf if you were to ever lose capacity and therefore have a lot of responsibility. With the Health and Welfare Lasting Power of Attorney, this can range from deciding which care home you are in, to refusing or consenting to life-sustaining treatment on your behalf. With the Property and Finance Lasting Power of Attorney, this can relate to making investments on your behalf, paying your bills, or buying and selling property.
When thinking about who you wish to appoint as your Attorney, you should consider how good the individual is at making decisions about their own life – do they handle their finances well? Are they good at looking after their own wellbeing? If you have complex finances or health concerns, you should consider whether the individual has the ability to make sense of complex situations.
Most importantly, you must be certain that whoever you are appointing as your Attorney will act in your best interests at all times.
Why not simply use a family member or friend?
For many individuals, appointing family members and close friends to act as their Attorneys is a suitable option. However, for some individuals this is not the case. For those who do not have any family members, or who do not feel as though their family members would be an appropriate appointment, it is possible to appoint Goughs Solicitors to act as your Attorney under the Property and Finance Lasting Power of Attorney. There are several benefits to appointing a professional as your Attorney:
Knowledge and experience: As lawyers, we are able to draw upon our extensive legal knowledge and experience in order to deal with any complex decisions that may arise in relation to your property or finances if you were to lose capacity.
Removing the burden from family and friends: When an individual loses capacity, it can be a very emotional time for their loved ones. Acting as an Attorney can be time consuming and administratively burdensome, which can be exceptionally stressful during such an emotional time. Appointing Goughs as your Attorney will allow us to deal with the paperwork and organisational tasks involved with being an Attorney, allowing your loved ones to focus on more important matters.
Reliability and impartiality: As a professional Attorney, we are aware of our legal duties in relation to our appointment. This means that we are clear on the role at hand and are best placed to understand the consequences of breaching any of the responsibilities of being an Attorney.
In addition, we are independent from your loved ones. Family relationships can be complicated and the added stress of a loved one losing capacity can add further complications. If you are concerned that there is a risk of issues arising between your attorneys, appointing a professional Attorney is sensible. Alternatively, it is possible to appoint Goughs to act as your Attorney alongside your loved ones to ensure accountability.
Cost of using a solicitor as an attorney
As every person and their requirements are so unique, please do get in touch with Goughs to discuss the cost of using a solicitor as an attorney.
How can Goughs help?
If you are interested in discussing Lasting Powers of Attorney further, or would like to book an appointment to visit your local Goughs Office to instruct a member of our Private Client team to prepare the documents for you.
