Lasting Powers of Attorney Solicitors
Most of us don’t like to think about what would happen if we lost the ability to make important decisions about our lives, whether through illness, injury or the effects of aging.
However, if you don’t put in place the right measures to allow these key decisions to be made, if you become unable to do so yourself, you could cause a lot of problems for yourself and your loved ones.
Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPAs) are documents that allow you to appoint a person or a number of people who will be able to make decisions on your behalf in relation to your affairs if you are unable to make decisions yourself.
LPAs must be carefully drafted to ensure they allow every aspect of your personal affairs to be managed effectively, including decisions about your health, welfare, property and finances. It is also important to make sure you pick the right attorney who you can rely on to make decisions in your best interests.
Wolferstans’ Lasting Power of Attorney solicitors can help you to quickly and effectively draft an LPA that protects your interests, giving you total peace of mind that your needs will be taken care of, whatever the future might hold and are able to take instructions remotely by video call.
Our sensitive, reliable Lasting Power of Attorney services
Services we offer:
- Lasting Power of Attorney advice
- Drafting LPAs
- Lasting Power of Attorney Registration
- Advising Attorneys on the use of an LPA
- LPA Management
- Professional Attorney Service
- Registration of Enduring Powers of Attorney (EPA’s)
Types of Lasting Power of Attorney we can assist with
There are two types of LPA:
Property & Financial Affairs LPA
This type of LPA can be used to enable your Attorneys to make decisions about your financial assets such as bank accounts, investments and buying or selling property. They can also action legal proceedings on your behalf.
Health & Welfare LPA
This type of LPA can be used to give your Attorneys authority to make decisions about your healthcare treatment and welfare decisions. These decisions will include where you will live, day to day care, what you might wear and eat. This type of LPA could be limited so that it only gives authority to make decisions in relation to your medical treatment or only to your personal welfare decisions. You can also give your Attorneys authority to make decisions about life sustaining treatment.
We appreciate that it can be daunting for your attorneys if they have never been appointed to deal with someone’s affairs before. We therefore offer all attorneys an advice session for a fixed fee where we can answer any questions that they have. We can advise them on what their role entails, their duties and what they can and cannot do.
General Powers of Attorney
A General Power of Attorney is a document that gives authority to your chosen Attorney(s) to make decisions on your behalf.
They are often used to allow someone to sign a document on your behalf and you can be specific about what the General Power of Attorney authorises your chosen attorneys to do for you. This might be useful if you are due to be out of the country when a transaction, requiring your signature or authority, is going to be completed. For example, they are often used in house purchases or commercial transactions.
If a more wide-ranging power is required, this can be given to your Attorneys.
General Powers of Attorney can be useful in some circumstances but can be quite limited. For example, they expire 12 months from the date of signing and will end if the donor lost mental capacity.
In many circumstances, you will find a Lasting Power of Attorney is a more suitable document, especially for long-term planning, as this type of Power of Attorney will not end on mental incapacity and is therefore more future proofed.
Even in relation to commercial scenarios, you may consider a Business Lasting Power of Attorney might be more suitable as it will again cover the ongoing business needs and ensure someone is appointed to manage your business affairs if you were to lose capacity in the future.
Services we offer for General Powers of Attorney:
- Checking your requirements - what do you need to authorise your attorneys to do for you?
- Liaising with colleagues in other departments such as Residential Property or our Commercial Team
- Drafting the General Power of Attorney
- Urgent General Power of Attorney Service where we can produce the document for you at short notice.
How much do Lasting Powers of Attorney cost?
The cost will depend on the type of LPA you need, including whether you need both a Property & Financial Affairs LPA and a Health & Welfare LPA.
For straightforward drafting and registration of an LPA, we may be able to agree a fixed cost in advance. For more complex matters, we are likely to charge according to a set hourly rate, so you can get exactly as much support as you need with complete transparency over the costs involved.
To find out more about the cost of making an LPA, please get in touch.
Book a consultation with our LPA solicitors in Plymouth
Planning for the future should never be put off. Creating an LPA while you are still in good health protects you and can make life much easier for your loved ones.
Get in touch to discuss how we can help you by calling 01752 643978.