It is the phone call that no family ever expects. A stroke, a sudden accident, or the slow diagnosis of dementia.
Then, just as the shock starts to settle, comes a second blow: the person you love has lost the legal ability to manage their own affairs, and nobody, not even a spouse of forty years, has the authority to step in.
Our private client lawyers have seen it too many times in our Richmond practice. A devoted family that cannot pay a loved one’s care home fees. A wife locked out of the accounts she has shared for decades. A family business that grinds to a halt because the one director who can sign a cheque is in hospital. Almost always, it could have been avoided by a single document: a Lasting Power of Attorney.
Yet all too often, we meet sensible, successful people who have never put one in place. Below are the seven mistakes we see most often, and why, if you take only one thing from this column, it should be to sort yours out now.
1. “I’ll Sort It Out Later”
This is the most dangerous mistake of all. A Lasting Power of Attorney, or LPA, can only be made while you still have full mental capacity. Lose that capacity first, and the door closes for good. Your family is then left with the Court of Protection: a process that can take the best part of a year, run to thousands of pounds, and put a judge, rather than you, in charge of deciding who manages your money.
And LPAs are not only for the elderly. Any adult who values their independence should have one.
2. The DIY Disaster
The internet is full of “free” LPA forms. They look simple enough. They are not. We have seen documents rejected years after they were signed because a witness was wrong, a signature was in the wrong place, or the wording handed attorneys powers the donor never meant to give. By the time anyone notices, it is usually too late to put right.
An LPA is a legal document with serious, lasting consequences. It is worth getting right the first time.
3. Choosing the Wrong People
Appointing attorneys is not a popularity contest. We have watched families fall out because all four siblings were appointed “jointly”, which meant a single disagreement froze every decision. We have seen elderly couples appoint only each other, name no replacement, and then both fall ill within months.
Choose people who are trustworthy and good with money, and who, ideally, get on with one another. Always name at least one replacement. And think hard before appointing anyone who is struggling with debts of their own.
4. Forgetting the Health and Welfare LPA
There are two LPAs, not one. The first covers your money and property. The second covers your health and personal care, including decisions about life-sustaining treatment. Without that second document, your family cannot insist on the care home you would have chosen, or speak for you when the doctors ask the hardest questions of all.
Most people prepare the financial LPA and stop there. That leaves a serious gap.
5. Forgetting Your Business
This is the one almost nobody thinks about until it is too late. If you are a company director, a sole trader, a landlord with several properties, or a partner in a professional firm, ask yourself a simple question: what happens to the business if you cannot sign anything tomorrow morning?
In most cases, the answer is disruption, and a lot of it. Wages go unpaid, contracts sit unsigned, bank mandates freeze, and tenants cannot reach anyone with authority. A separate business LPA names attorneys who actually understand your commercial affairs, who are often different from the relatives looking after your personal finances. They can keep the company trading while you recover, or wind things down sensibly if you cannot. For an owner, this is less a luxury than a basic piece of continuity planning.
6. Signing It and Forgetting to Register It
An LPA has no legal effect until it is registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, and registration currently takes somewhere around four to five months. Families who wait until capacity is already failing often find they cannot access the very accounts they need to pay for care.
Register the document as soon as it is signed. It can then sit in a drawer for years, ready the moment anyone needs it.
7. Treating It as a One-Off
Circumstances change. Marriages end, children grow up, friendships cool, businesses are sold, and new ones are started. An LPA drawn up fifteen years ago might still name an ex-spouse, a parent who has since died, or a sibling you no longer speak to.
It is worth reviewing yours every few years, and certainly after any major life change.
The Hardest Conversation You Will Be Glad You Had
We often tell clients that an LPA is one of the kindest things you can do for the people who love you. It spares them the court process, the cost, and the awful guesswork at exactly the moment they can least cope with it. For a business owner, it can be the difference between a company that comes through a crisis and one that quietly falls apart.
It takes an afternoon. It costs a small fraction of what the alternative will cost your family later. And once it is done, you can largely forget about it.
If you have been meaning to get round to this, and most people have, let June be the month you finally do.
To arrange a confidential consultation with our private client team in Richmond upon Thames, contact Jackson Longe Solicitors on 0208 332 2069 or email info@jacksonlonge.com. Your family, and your business, will thank you for it.
