What is a Lasting Power of Attorney and Why Does Everyone Need One?

What is a Lasting Power of Attorney?

A Lasting Power of Attorney — known as an LPA — is a legal document that allows you to appoint one or more people, called attorneys, to make decisions on your behalf if you ever lose the mental capacity to make those decisions yourself.

Your attorney could be a spouse, an adult child, a close friend or a professional. You choose who you trust. Without an LPA, even the people closest to you have no legal authority to manage your affairs if something happens to you.

The Two Types of LPA in England and Wales

1. Property and Financial Affairs LPA

This covers decisions about your money and property. Your attorney can manage your bank accounts, pay bills, collect benefits, manage investments and deal with property transactions on your behalf.

You can choose whether your attorney can act as soon as the LPA is registered — which allows them to help you with financial matters while you still have capacity — or only when you have lost capacity. Most people choose the latter as the more cautious approach, though either is valid depending on your circumstances.

2. Health and Welfare LPA

This covers decisions about your personal care and medical treatment. Your attorney can make decisions about where you live, your day-to-day care and routine, and your medical treatment. You can also choose to give your attorney authority to make decisions about life-sustaining treatment on your behalf — this is one of the most significant decisions in the document and entirely your personal choice.

A Health and Welfare LPA can only be used when you have lost mental capacity. Your attorney cannot use it while you are still able to make your own decisions.

Why You Need an LPA Regardless of Your Age

Many people assume LPAs are only for older people. This is a common and costly misconception. Mental capacity can be affected at any age — through an accident, a sudden illness, a stroke or any number of unexpected circumstances.

If you lost capacity tomorrow without an LPA in place, your family would face a very difficult situation. They would have no legal authority to access your bank accounts, pay your mortgage, manage your care or make decisions about your treatment — even if they are your spouse or your children.

The only alternative would be to apply to the Court of Protection for a deputyship order. This process is lengthy, expensive and stressful — often taking many months — and the court may appoint someone different from who you would have chosen.

What Happens Without an LPA

Without an LPA, if you lose mental capacity:

• Your bank may freeze your accounts even to your spouse
• Nobody can legally pay your bills or manage your finances without a court order
• Medical decisions may be made entirely by doctors without input from your family
• Your family must apply to the Court of Protection — a process that can take six months or longer and cost several thousand pounds
• The court may appoint a deputy you would not have chosen yourself

An LPA prepared now takes all of this uncertainty away. It is a relatively straightforward document to prepare — and the peace of mind it provides is invaluable.

Who Can Make an LPA?

To make an LPA in England and Wales you must be aged 18 or over and have mental capacity at the time of making it. This is why it is important to put one in place before any health concerns arise — once you have lost capacity it is too late to make an LPA.

The Certificate Provider

Every LPA must be signed in the presence of an independent certificate provider — a person who confirms that you understand what you are signing and are doing so freely and without pressure from anyone else.

Your certificate provider must be someone who either knows you well — such as a close friend or colleague you have known for at least two years — or a professional such as a GP, solicitor or registered social worker. They cannot be a family member, an attorney named in the LPA, or anyone connected to your attorneys.

You arrange your own certificate provider, and we provide full guidance on choosing a suitable person with your documents. If you would like us to check your signed LPA over a Teams video call before you submit it to the OPG, we can do this free of charge — you just need to ask.

Signing Your LPA — The Order Matters

LPAs must be signed in a specific legal order. If the order is wrong, the LPA is invalid and cannot be corrected — a completely new LPA must be made and the registration fee paid again. This is the single most common reason LPAs are rejected.

The correct order is:

1. The donor signs first. On a Health and Welfare LPA, the donor signs the life-sustaining treatment section (Section 5) before anything else, with a witness watching. The witness then signs immediately afterwards.
2. Continuation sheets — if your LPA has any, the donor signs and dates these before signing Section 9.
3. The donor signs Section 9 with a witness watching. The witness signs immediately afterwards.
4. The certificate provider signs Section 10 — after the donor, and before any attorney. Their signature does not need a witness.
5. The attorneys and any replacement attorneys sign Section 11, each with a witness watching. Replacement attorneys must sign too — forgetting this is a common cause of applications being returned.
6. The person registering signs Section 15 last, once everyone else has finished.

Witness Rules

• A witness must be aged 18 or over and must be physically present, watching the person sign. Witnessing by video call or signing afterwards is not permitted.
• The donor's signature cannot be witnessed by an attorney or replacement attorney — or by a family member of an attorney, even if that person is not named in the LPA.
• The donor cannot witness an attorney's signature. One attorney may witness another attorney's signature.
• The certificate provider's signature does not need a witness at all.
• Every witness must print their full name and address on the form.

Avoiding the Most Common Errors

• Use black or blue ink only. Never pencil.
• Date everything with the actual date of signing. Dates cannot be pre-dated or post-dated, and should be written clearly.
• Never use correction fluid, Tippex or stickers. If you make a mistake, draw a single line through it, write the correction alongside, and initial it.
• Keep the two LPAs completely separate. If you are registering both a Financial and a Health and Welfare LPA, do not mix the pages. Mixed pages can mean starting again and paying again.
• On the Health and Welfare LPA, choose one life-sustaining treatment option only — either giving your attorneys authority or not. Ticking both, or neither, invalidates the form.
• Check every name, date of birth and address before anyone signs. Spelling errors are among the most common causes of rejection.
• Do not alter anything after signing.

Registering Your LPA

An LPA has no legal effect until it has been registered with the Office of the Public Guardian. Your attorney cannot use it until the registered copy has been returned to you. Registration currently takes 8 to 20 weeks from submission. This is an OPG timescale outside anyone's control — which is why it is so important to make and register your LPA as early as possible rather than waiting until you need it.

The OPG charges a registration fee of £92 per LPA — £184 for both a Property and Financial and a Health and Welfare LPA. You may be eligible for a full exemption or a 50% reduction depending on your income or benefits. If this may apply to you, we include form LPA120 in your document pack — you complete it, attach evidence, and post it in the same envelope as your LPA. Claims cannot be made after registration, so it is important not to miss this. Eligibility is decided by the OPG, not by us.

How Our LPA Service Works

Our complete LPA package covers everything from start to finish:

• You complete our detailed online order form
• We prepare your draft LPA documents within 48 hours and send them to you for approval
• You arrange your own independent certificate provider and sign your documents in your own time, following the detailed signing guidelines we provide
• Optionally, we can check your signed documents over a Teams video call before submission — free of charge, if you ask us to
• You post your signed forms to the Office of the Public Guardian yourself, using the address and checklist in your signing guidelines
• The OPG registers your LPAs and posts the registered documents directly back to you

The OPG registration fee of £92 per LPA is payable separately and directly to the OPG — this is a government fee not included in our service charge.