Lasting Powers of Attorney

A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) is a legal document that lets you choose someone you trust, called your attorney, to make decisions on your behalf if something happens and you cannot make those decisions yourself. It is one of the most important documents you will ever sign, and one of the most overlooked.

Most people know they should have a Will. Far fewer have thought about what happens if they are alive but unable to manage their own affairs, whether through dementia, a stroke, an accident, or any other cause. An LPA fills that gap. Without one, even the people closest to you have no automatic legal authority to act for you.

The two types

There are two kinds of LPA, and most people put both in place at the same time.

1. Property and financial affairs LPA

This type gives your attorney the authority to manage anything financial on your behalf:

• running your bank and building society accounts, and paying your bills;
• collecting your pension, your benefits and any other income;
• dealing with your tax affairs;
• managing your investments;
• maintaining, letting, buying or selling property, including your home.

Once it is registered, and with your written consent, a property and financial affairs LPA can be used while you still have mental capacity, which can be genuinely useful if you find it difficult to get to the bank, travel abroad for extended periods, or simply want someone you trust to help with the administration. Many people use their LPA in this way long before any health crisis arises.

2. Health and welfare LPA

This type gives your attorney the authority to make decisions about you personally:

• where you live, including a move into residential care;
• your day-to-day care: what you eat, what you wear, your daily routine;
• the medical treatment you receive, and who provides it;
• whether to consent to or refuse life-sustaining treatment, but only if you have specifically given that power.

Unlike the property LPA, a health and welfare LPA can only be used once you have lost the mental capacity to make the relevant decision yourself. While you have capacity, you make your own health decisions. Once you do not, your attorney steps in.

If you want your attorney to have the power to consent to or refuse life-sustaining treatment on your behalf, you must tick the specific box authorising this when you create the LPA; it is not automatic.

Why it matters

The scale of the need

Research commissioned by the Alzheimer's Society puts the number of people in the UK living with dementia at around a million, projected to rise to 1.4 million by 2040 (Alzheimer's Society, facts for the media, checked August 2026). Dementia is only one cause of lost mental capacity. Strokes, brain tumours, serious accidents and progressive neurological conditions affect people at every age. Headway, the brain injury association, records 335,409 UK hospital admissions for acquired brain injury in 2023-24, which is one every 90 seconds (Headway, key statistics, checked August 2026).

Mental incapacity is not something that happens only to the elderly. It can happen to anyone, at any time. An LPA is not a document for "when you're older." It is a document for anyone who has assets to manage and people who depend on them.

The gap that no one else fills

Most UK adults do not have an LPA, and many do not have a Will. Many people assume that family members can step in automatically. They cannot. Regardless of how close your relationship is, no family member has an automatic legal right to manage your finances or make decisions about your care without a formal document in place.

Three good reasons to act now

1. You can only make an LPA while you have capacity. The document that protects you in a crisis has to exist before the crisis. There is no way to make one afterwards, and no family member can make one for you.
2. The alternative is slower and dearer. Without an LPA, your family has to apply to the Court of Protection to be appointed as your deputy. That takes months rather than weeks, costs a great deal more than registering an LPA, and leaves them answerable to the Office of the Public Guardian for as long as the deputyship lasts. More on that below.
3. You choose, or somebody else does. With an LPA you pick the people, and you can write in guidance about how you want decisions made. Without one, the court decides who acts, and it may not be the person you would have chosen.

The misconceptions that catch families out

"My next of kin can deal with it"

Next of kin is a term used mostly in medical settings, to identify who should be contacted in an emergency. It creates no legal authority at all. Your next of kin cannot access your bank accounts, manage your property, give instructions to your pension provider or make binding decisions about your care without an LPA.

"Everything is in joint names, so we are fine"

Banks can restrict a joint account when one holder loses mental capacity, and sometimes freeze it entirely until legal authority is established. A jointly owned property cannot be sold or remortgaged without both owners giving legally valid consent. If one owner can no longer give it, the other has to apply to the Court of Protection before a sale or remortgage can go ahead.

"I already have a power of attorney"

An ordinary power of attorney, the kind used for a specific purpose or a fixed period, becomes invalid the moment you lose mental capacity. Only an LPA, registered with the Office of the Public Guardian before it is needed, carries on working after capacity is lost.

"My partner knows what I would want"

They may know exactly what you would want. But without a registered health and welfare LPA, medical staff are not legally required to follow it. In serious cases, decisions about your treatment may be taken by clinicians or by a court rather than by your family.

"I am too young and too healthy to need this"

Loss of capacity is not only an old age problem. Strokes, brain injuries and sudden illness do not check your age first. An LPA is one of those documents you hope never to use, and are very glad to have if you do.

What happens if you don't have one

If you lose mental capacity without a registered LPA, your family faces a difficult situation. To make decisions on your behalf, they must apply to the Court of Protection (the specialist court that deals with decisions about people who lack mental capacity) for a deputyship order (an order appointing someone to manage your affairs in place of the attorney you never nominated).

The consequences of this route include:

• Cost. A Court of Protection application fee, a further fee if the court holds a hearing, an annual Office of the Public Guardian supervision fee, and in most cases a security bond. Registering an LPA costs £92.
• Delay. Months rather than weeks, during which nobody can act. Bills, care fees and mortgage payments do not wait.
• Loss of choice. The court decides who is appointed, and it may not be the person you would have picked.
• Ongoing supervision. A deputy reports annually to the Office of the Public Guardian for as long as the deputyship lasts.
• No cover for health and welfare. The court rarely appoints personal welfare deputies, so decisions about your care may be taken by clinicians rather than by your family.

Court and OPG fees change from time to time. Check the current figures on GOV.UK before relying on them.

A registered LPA avoids the need for a deputyship application in almost all cases.

A worked example: the cost of not planning

Imagine David and Susan, a couple in their early 70s with a jointly owned home worth £500,000, savings, and no LPA. David has a stroke and loses capacity. Susan cannot sell the house to fund care or downsize, because she needs David's legally valid consent. She cannot access his pension income or manage his sole accounts. She must apply to the Court of Protection for a deputyship: paying the application fee, waiting months, providing a security bond, and then reporting each year to the Office of the Public Guardian and paying an annual supervision fee for as long as David lives. If she had simply put an LPA in place years earlier, a single afternoon's work, almost none of this would have arisen. The LPA would have been in the drawer, registered, ready to use.

This is a hypothetical example for illustration only.

Already have an LPA? Worth a second look

If you made an LPA years ago, it is worth checking it was actually registered and that your attorneys are still the people you would choose today. We will look at it with you, free of charge. Book a call or ring 01233 659 796.

Choosing your attorneys

Your attorney does not need to be a solicitor or a financial professional. In most cases it should be someone you trust completely and who knows you well. Some practical points to weigh up:

• Appoint more than one. Name replacement attorneys so the LPA still works if your first choice dies, loses capacity, or simply cannot act.
• Decide how they act. "Jointly" means they must all agree on everything, which is safe but slow, and stops altogether if one of them cannot act. "Jointly and severally" means any of them can act alone, which is far more practical day to day.
• Think about distance. An attorney living overseas can struggle with banks and with anything that needs a signature in person.
• Think about the job, not the relationship. The right person for your money is not always the right person for your care. You can appoint different attorneys for each LPA.
• Ask them first. Being an attorney carries real responsibility. Nobody should find out by letter.

Making and registering an LPA

An LPA is a formal legal document on a prescribed form. It must include:

• your details as donor, and the details of every attorney and replacement attorney;
• how you want your attorneys to act: jointly, or jointly and severally;
• anyone you want notified when the LPA is registered;
• your certificate provider: an independent person who confirms you understand the document and are not being pressured into it;
• any preferences, instructions or restrictions you want recorded; and
• signatures in the right order, on the right dates, witnessed correctly.

The LPA must then be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) before it can be used. The registration fee is £92 per LPA, so £184 if you register both types. Help with the fee comes in two forms:

• Remission, a 50% reduction, if the donor's gross annual income is under £12,000.
• Exemption, nothing to pay, if the donor receives certain means-tested benefits.

Universal Credit is assessed for remission only, not exemption. Apply on form LPA120 at the same time as you apply to register: OPG fees are not refundable, so you cannot claim a reduction or an exemption after the fee has been paid. Fees are set by the OPG and change from time to time. Check GOV.UK before you send anything.

GOV.UK says registration takes 8 to 10 weeks if there are no mistakes in the application. Before you apply, you send a notice (form LP3) to everyone you listed as a "person to be told", and they have 3 weeks to raise any concerns with the OPG.

Mistakes on the forms are the main cause of delay, and there are several common ones. The OPG returns the form rather than correcting it. Depending on the type of mistake, it may let you correct it and apply again within 3 months for £46. Getting it right first time is where professional help pays for itself.

The Powers of Attorney Act 2023 paved the way for a fully digital LPA service, which is expected to speed up both creation and registration. Check GOV.UK for the current position before you start. This factsheet was last reviewed in August 2026 and the position may have moved on since.

Making your LPA work for you: practical guidance

Register now, not later. The LPA must be registered before it is needed. You cannot apply for registration when you have already lost capacity. The process takes weeks, time you may not have in a crisis.

Keep the original safe. The registered original (which carries an OPG stamp) is the document attorneys will need to produce. Keep it somewhere secure but accessible, your file at Squiggle, a fireproof safe, or with your solicitor.

Tell your attorneys where it is. An LPA is no use if no one knows where it is. Make sure your attorneys know where to find the original and understand what their role involves before they need to use it.

Review it as life changes. If an attorney dies, loses capacity, or becomes estranged from you, you should review and update your LPA. You cannot simply amend the existing one; you would need to make a new LPA (and register the new one). The existing LPA remains valid in the meantime if other attorneys can still act.

Include guidance in the document. The LPA allows you to include preferences and guidance for your attorneys, for example, "I would prefer to remain at home for as long as it is safe to do so" or "please consult my son on all financial decisions above £5,000." This guidance is not legally binding in the same way as restrictions, but it gives your attorneys important context.

Do it at the same appointment as your Will. Most people put their Will and both LPAs in place in one sitting. The decisions overlap almost entirely, the same people often take both roles, and it means the gap an LPA covers is closed on the same day your Will is signed. Our Starting Your Legacy Planning factsheet sets out what to bring.

Common mistakes

Waiting until you need it. The single most common mistake. An LPA can only be made while you have capacity. By the time a health crisis makes it urgent, it may be too late to create one.

Making only one type. A property LPA and a health and welfare LPA cover different things. You need both.

Filling in the forms without help. The prescribed LPA forms are detailed and contain several points where errors are easily made. A single mistake can invalidate the document or cause the OPG to return it for correction.

Appointing attorneys without having the conversation. Your attorneys are agreeing to take on real responsibilities. They need to understand your wishes, particularly your health and welfare attorney. Never appoint someone without speaking to them first.

Never reviewing it. If your chosen attorney dies, moves away, or your relationship with them changes significantly, your LPA may need updating. Review it alongside your Will every few years.

Questions? Book a free call

Pick a time that suits you and your local Squiggle consultant will call you. No charge, no obligation. Book a call or call 01233 659 796.

Talk to Squiggle: 01233 659 796 | hello@squiggleconsult.co.uk | www.squiggleconsult.co.uk | Book a free call: meet.squiggleconsult.co.uk

This factsheet is general information for England and Wales, not legal, tax or financial advice. Last reviewed: August 2026.