Written by: Jason

Category: Lasting Power Of Attorney

Published: 30th April 2015

A lasting power of attorney (LPA) is a legal document that allows you the ‘Donor’ to nominate someone you trust as an ‘Attorney’ who will have the power to make decisions on your behalf if you lose the mental capacity to make decisions for yourself in the future.

Types of Lasting Power of Attorney

There are two different types of Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA).

Property and Financial Affairs

An LPA for Property and Financial Affairs provides directions to your Attorneys and allows them to deal with your money and property if you lose the mental capacity to make decisions for yourself.

Health and Welfare

An LPA for Health and Welfare provides directions to your Attorneys and allows them to make decisions about your healthcare and well-being if you lose the mental capacity to make decisions for yourself.

What is Mental Capacity

Mental Capacity refers to the ability to make decisions for yourself whilst having a basic understanding of the decisions you are making, for example why you need to make them and what the consequences of making the decision would be.

If you have a Lasting Power of Attorney registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) and subsequently lose the mental capacity to make decisions your attorneys can only make decisions that you’ve allowed them to make in your LPA.

Ways to make a Lasting Power of Attorney

1) You can make a Lasting Power of Attorney yourself manually by downloading the correct forms from the GOV.UK website, completing them and sending them off to the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) for registration.

2) You can make a Lasting Power of Attorney online by using the Ministry of Justice Creation Tool

3) If you either don’t have the time or do not feel confident in making a Lasting Power of Attorney yourself, you can use a Lasting Power of Attorney creation service provided by a Will Writing and Estate Planning Company like Mind At Rest Wills LPA Creation Service or ask a Solicitor to make one for you.

It’s a good idea to shop around for some fixed fee quotations to make sure you get the best deal and only pay a fixed price, we currently charge £290 plus OPG registration fees per LPA for our complete end to end service.