Overview – Lasting Power of Attorney -
The Lasting Power of Attorney (“LPA”), once registered with the Office of the Public Guardian and after you have lost your mental capacity, can be used by your attorneys to enable them to look after health and welfare. This includes making decisions about your medication ( when this medication is likely to extend your life), where you live, and who comes to see you.
Your attorneys (and replacement attorneys) are governed by the Mental Capacity Act 2005 when making their decisions. They are accountable to the Office of the Public Guardian/Court of Protection.
The Court of Protection do take legal action where they think an attorney is abusing their position. This has resulted in attorneys going to prison.
Attorneys and Replacement Attorneys
The LPA – Health and Welfare allows you to appoint attorneys and replacement attorneys. The replacement attorneys take over from your attorneys when your attorneys are unable or unwilling to act for you.
You must also stipulate (if appointing more than one attorney or replacement attorney) how your attorneys are to work together. i.e. are they to work jointly and severally, or jointly, or jointly and severally for some aspects and jointly for others.
When making your selection you need to be aware that some arrangements work better than others. If using our home visit service we will give you advice so that you have the most effective setup.
Restrictions and Guidance Notes to Your Attorneys
The LPA – Health and Welfare allows you to impose specific restrictions upon your attorneys and replacement attorneys. You can also give them guidance notes as to your own preferences and wishes.
Care is needed with the wording of these restrictions and guidance notes. If the Office of the Public Guardian consider a guidance note to be a specific restriction you risk the registration of the LPA being declined. Similarly, if you insert any restriction which the OPG considers is impractical they will either delete the restriction or (in the worst case scenario) refuse to register the LPA.
If you use our home visit service we will give you advice on this topic, and create the appropriate wording for you.
Certificate Provider
A third party will need to certify that you have mental capacity at the time of making the LPA Property and Affairs.
It is possible to use a friend but there is a significant risk that the LPA will be rejected at the time of registration. A better course is to use a professional.
We have acted as the certificate provider to many hundreds of LPA – Health and Welfare.
Person to Be Notified
You will need to nominate a at least one person to be notified at the time the LPA Health and Welfare is registered.
If using our services we will give you guidance on this topic.
Can I Make My Own Lasting Power of Attorney?
The document must be made in a prescribed format. Forms can be downloaded from the government website – please see our links page for details.
In theory the forms are designed for the general public to complete. However many people approach us to help them make the forms for them in view of the amount of typing required, the need for a Certificate Provider to certify that the donor is of sound mind, and the risk of completing the forms incorrectly with the consequences that might entail.
Why should I use Convenient Wills to help make my LPA?
We have significant experience of making and registering Lasting Powers of Attorney - so we save you a significant amount of time researching how to make these documents. If you put a price on your time saved you will see we offer good value. In addition we have high quality paper and an appropriate printer to print the documents off, scanner to make copies for you, and we act as your ‘certificate provider’ also.
What everybody ought to know about Health and Welfare LPAs
Lasting Powers of Attorney – Health and Welfare are very powerful documents.
Every adult in England and Wales should have one. You never know when you might lose your mental capacity.
Without one your doctor and Social Services will decide what medication you receive, and where you are to live, if you should ever lose your mental capacity.
But by making an LPA Health and Welfare you authorise the people you trust (e.g. your spouse or your adult children) to make these decisions.
If you want a family member to make decisions about your financial affairs in the event of you losing mental capacity, you must formally appoint them as your attorneys.
Real Life Examples
Example 1: I (proprietor of Convenient Wills) was appointed attorney for a long time friend. Sadly that friend has now passed away but in the final weeks of her life friend I had to use the LPA Health and Welfare on a number of occasions. On each occasion there was no hesitation by the official giving me information and discussing my friends needs -
Example 2: My client told me about the experiences she had had with her husband.
He had been admitted to hospital with a blood infection and she was told by the doctors that he only had 2 to 24 hours to live. The doctors indicated that they were not intending on giving him any medication to fight his infection, and food and drink was not to be given either as this would merely prolong his suffering. My client, and her family who had subsequently arrived, had to watch her husband’s condition deteriorate – just waiting for one of his vital organs to fail and for him to die. The family’s request to give him food, water, and medication were declined.
The family stayed with him, and agreed a rota systems to ensure someone was by his bedside at all times. After 24 hours one of the family members took matters into her own hands and gave the husband some water – which he gulped down. The family also took up the case with the hospital as to why no medication was being given. They eventually agreed to give the husband a course of antibiotics and from that moment on matters began to improve.
Within a further 48 hours the husband had fully recovered and is still alive today – some 18 months later. Had the family not been there and argued hard with the NHS staff the husband would have died.
It turns out that the husband had been placed on a plan similar to the Liverpool Care Pathway. Also the doctors had misdiagnosed the husband, believing that prior to picking up the blood infection he was able to communicate whereas in fact the husband had not communicated with anybody for a number of years due to suffering from the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s.
The families experiences would have been so much easier had the husband made an LPA Health and Welfare.
Example 3: I was called by the daughter of my client. She thanked me for arranging an LPA Health and Welfare for her mother. The mother had now passed away but in the latter few weeks of her life the daughter, in conjunction with her father, was able to make a number of significant decisions – albeit painful ones that required considerable soul searching -
In each case, having the LPA which granted her and her father the appropriate powers, enabled the family to feel that they were in control of mother’s destiny -
The daughter commented that other families were less fortunate because their loved ones have not made a Lasting Power of Attorney Health and Welfare.