Power of Attorney

[Ex Footy Legs]

Thinking of doing doing our Power of Attorney as Parents nominating our two kids. Trying to find out how easy it is to do it yourself rather than pay a solicitor. The obvious difference being cost,would be interested in comments from those who have completed this either with or without a solicitor.

Doing it right now for my dad, it’s cost him £750 through a solicitor.

 

[Hap]

Thinking of doing doing our Power of Attorney as Parents nominating our two kids. Trying to find out how easy it is to do it yourself rather than pay a solicitor. The obvious difference being cost,would be interested in comments from those who have completed this either with or without a solicitor.

Did it ourselves too. It's just paperwork. A bit long-winded, but not too challenging

 

[Billy Horner]

I use Ten Minute Will for this sort of stuff. Done a couple of LPAs and wills using their service.

You tell them the full details of each person and they send you a pdf version of the completed form. They also send you an easy to follow set of instructions regarding who signs where and in what order.

Costs about £50 per LPA. There’s also about £80 to pay when you register it with the court, but everyone has to pay that anyway (unless the donor receives certain benefits).

Make an LPA Online - Lasting Power of Attorney - tenminutewill.co.uk

UK's Leading Online LPA Writing Service. Simple multiple-choice questionnaire. Every Document PROFESSIONALLY CHECKED. Make an LPA, Making an LPA, Write your fully legal LPA Online, Write your fully legal Lasting Power of Attorney Online.

www.tenminutewill.co.uk

 

[kuepper]

Thinking of doing doing our Power of Attorney as Parents nominating our two kids. Trying to find out how easy it is to do it yourself rather than pay a solicitor. The obvious difference being cost,would be interested in comments from those who have completed this either with or without a solicitor.

Don't get a solicitor to do it, do it yourself it's a doddle. I did both finance and health ones without any issues. Once you've sent them in it takes several months for them to come into force. so don't hang about too long. There's plenty of advice on the govt website when you diy like I did.

This goes through all the POA options https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/power-of-attorney/#howto

 

[Redwurzel]

Organisations such as local social services and building societies want certified copies of LPAs for you to do things on behalf of a relative.

In my experience this means they need to be stamped by a solicitor on every page (typically 12 to 16 pages). Skipton BS wanted every page signed by a solicitor. Ideally you should register the LPA financial with your relatives main bank/bs. It been worth hundreds of pounds, possibly so far to have LPA (finance) for a parent.

Our solicitor (Nick Blundell) keeps a master copy and will produce other certified copies on demand for free. The original legal costs around £350 plus £83 for the Office of Public Guardian. He also does wills and takes on legal care cases. (a growing field).

 

[Hap]

Organisations such as local social services and building societies want certified copies of LPAs for you to do things on behalf of a relative.

In my experience this means they need to be stamped by a solicitor on every page (typically 12 to 16 pages). Skipton BS wanted every page signed by a solicitor. Ideally you should register the LPA financial with your relatives main bank/bs. It been worth hundreds of pounds, possibly so far to have LPA (finance) for a parent.

Our solicitor (Nick Blundell) keeps a master copy and will produce other certified copies on demand for free. The original legal costs around £350 plus £83 for the Office of Public Guardian. He also does wills and takes on legal care cases. (a growing field).

Interesting.

That certainty wasn’t the case for us. We downloaded the form from the .GOV website and only received confirmation of approval last week.
The documents did come back with a perforated number stamp on every page, but that was done by the Government Office of the Public Guardian.
We paid £83, for the Financial and Medical document submissions, but nothing else.

 

[Norman_Conquest]

Thinking of doing doing our Power of Attorney as Parents nominating our two kids. Trying to find out how easy it is to do it yourself rather than pay a solicitor. The obvious difference being cost,would be interested in comments from those who have completed this either with or without a solicitor.

We did it a few years back for my father and went through a solicitor. There are five of us and processing it going through a solicitor goes someway to show everything was done above board.

Recently we put his house into a Trust in my elder sister's and my name and this prevents the house from being used by the authorities to pay for care fees if he needs to go into a home. There was a fee of £3,000 for this but it is nothing compared families could lose.

 

[Redwurzel]

Interesting.

That certainty wasn’t the case for us. We downloaded the form from the .GOV website and only received confirmation of approval last week.
The documents did come back with a perforated number stamp on every page, but that was done by the Government Office of the Public Guardian.
We paid £83, for the Financial and Medical document submissions, but nothing else.

Have you tried using the LPA?

 

[Billy Horner]

Organisations such as local social services and building societies want certified copies of LPAs for you to do things on behalf of a relative.

In my experience this means they need to be stamped by a solicitor on every page (typically 12 to 16 pages). Skipton BS wanted every page signed by a solicitor. Ideally you should register the LPA financial with your relatives main bank/bs. It been worth hundreds of pounds, possibly so far to have LPA (finance) for a parent.

Our solicitor (Nick Blundell) keeps a master copy and will produce other certified copies on demand for free. The original legal costs around £350 plus £83 for the Office of Public Guardian. He also does wills and takes on legal care cases. (a growing field).

You shouldn’t need to send any hard copies to any organisation these days.

If the LPA was created after 2020, you use .gov.uk to create a share code (bit like you would for your driving licence) for different organisations, including banks, utility companies, etc. Then they can view what the LPA covers, who are the attorneys, etc.

Never had any problem with it.

 

[Hap]

Have you tried using the LPA?

That was what we did, yes. We downloaded both Finance and Healthcare versions.
The signatures, for individual sections, have to be done in a particular date order, this is important, but the cost was £89 each.

 

[BoroBosco]

Recently we put his house into a Trust in my elder sister's and my name and this prevents the house from being used by the authorities to pay for care fees if he needs to go into a home. There was a fee of £3,000 for this but it is nothing compared families could lose.

This is classed as deprivation of assets and a local authority can still charge you the rate they would if you still had the asset. Unlike inheritance tax there is no time limit on this.

 

[Hap]

This is classed as deprivation of assets and a local authority can still charge you the rate they would if you still had the asset. Unlike inheritance tax there is no time limit on this.

There was a time limit when we looked at something like this, we just decided against going down that route. At the time is was either five or ten years,

 

[Redwurzel]

I can only speak from my experience - When using the POA, opposed to just creating one - Redcar and Cleveland Council wanted a hard copy so did two building societies. The second building society was in June of this year. Maybe if I had pressed them they would have had to accept digital copies.

Ref: Putting parents houses into Trusts to avoid paying care home fees for parents: I thought the Government has stopped people doing this. There was talk of setting a maximum in care home fees but its not been passed as law. As said transferring parents assets to younger family members is deprivation of assets or could also affect Inheritance Tax calculations and potentially tax evasion.

 

[Hap]

I can only speak from my experience - When using the POA, opposed to just creating one - Redcar and Cleveland Council wanted a hard copy so did two building societies. The second building society was in June of this year. Maybe if I had pressed them they would have had to accept digital copies.

Ref: Putting parents houses into Trusts to avoid paying care home fees for parents: I thought the Government has stopped people doing this. There was talk of setting a maximum in care home fees but its not been passed as law. As said transferring parents assets to younger family members is deprivation of assets or could also affect Inheritance Tax calculations and potentially tax avoidance.

We did get hard copies back from the Office of the Public Guardian. No experience of exercising this yet though tbh.

It's quite possible the situation has changed regarding trusts and transferred assets. It was more than five years since we looked at that.