Lasting Power of Attorney – Taking Care of your Finances, Property, Health and Welfare

If you have a Will, you have tackled half of the problem. You see, a Will takes care of your affairs after death, but what about your affairs during your lifetime – who looks after these if you can’t?

Queue in Lasting Powers of Attorney or LPA for short.

An LPA is a powerful legal document which allows you (known as the ‘Donor’) to appoint someone else (known as the ‘Attorney’) to make decisions and/or manage your affairs on your behalf. There are 2 types of LPAs; one that deals with health and welfare decisions and the second that deal with property and financial decisions.

Health & Welfare issues

Examples which you, as the Donor can include in your health and welfare LPA are as follows:

• Most importantly, whether or not you give your attorneys power to make a decision when it comes to life-sustaining medical treatment.
• Whether you want to be taken to a particular private care home.

For instance, I acted for a client in her late 70s had always lived in Notting Hill (W11) and stipulated in her LPA that she wants to be taken to a private care home in W11 3PH ;

• If you adhere to certain dietary regimes (ie: vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, halal/kosher etc), to ensure this is maintained when you lose mental capacity;
• That you would like to take regular exercise or be taken outdoors for walks etc
• If you practice a particular faith/religion, to ensue the attorneys maintain certain religious activities.

Property & Financial issues

Examples which you can include in your property and financial LPA are as follows:

• You can allow your attorneys to access all or certain bank accounts to deal with paying their bills, groceries, transport etc.
• If you regularly buy gifts for family/friends’ birthday or other occasions, you can specify that your attorneys continue this practice on your behalf.
• If you have properties on rent, you can instruct your attorneys to deal with the tenants, management companies, lettings management etc on your behalf.

For instance, a client owned a string of properties in Kensington (W11) which were managed by a lettings management team and for ease appointed them as one of his attorneys.

• If you have an investment portfolio of shares, bonds, cash etc, you can specify whether you want the attorneys to take over.
• You can specify that any investments made from your funds are made in ethical investment funds.

Unlike the health and welfare LPA, you must decide in your property and financial LPA whether the attorneys can step in and act on your behalf before or after you lose mental capacity.

Give Oliver Fisher Solicitors a call on 0203 219 0145 and discuss with Samina Aslam or Stephen West in our Private Client team how to make a start with preparing you own LPAs.