First of all, as long as you have made a Lasting Power of Attorney relating to Financial Decisions, and it has been registered making it a valid legal document, without any restrictions on how your Attorneys can act, they should be able to sell property on your behalf. 

 

However, as with any Property Sale, if there is more than one owner, and one of the owners is unable to sign documents themselves, there would need to be another independent person who could make decisions on their behalf. 

 

For example, if you appointed your partner to be your sole Attorney, and they wanted to sell a jointly owned property on both of your behalf, this may not be possible at first glance. In order to deal with the property sale, they may need to speak to a solicitor. If you wish to discuss this, contact our team online, here. 

 

However, if you appointed your partner and, for example, your child, both could join together and deal with the sale as your Attorneys, without needing to place the property into a Trust. 

 

If your Attorney is not a co-owner of your property, they should encounter no issues with selling the property. 

Your signature, and the signature of your Attorneys, should be witnessed by an independent witness over the age of 18, who has capacity themself. In the case of LPAs, Attorneys can witness each other's signatures. 

 

If you are instructing our LPA Solicitors to draft the documents on your behalf, our team can act as your witness. 

If your Attorneys are friends or family, they should not really be paid for acting as your Attorneys. If the Donor wants to compensate the Attorney, for example if they have to leave their job to care for the Donor full time, they should speak to the Office of the Public Guardian, or the Department for Work and Pensions about carer’s allowance. 

 

As a Lasting Power of Attorney is a legal deed, the Office of the Public Guardian stipulates that it must be copied in a particular way. They offer guidance about how to do this when they send you the final document, after it has been registered. However, it’s important to note that most organisations won’t accept just a plain copy of the original document, at least not without sight of the original. 

No, an Attorney should not make gifts to themselves, in most cases. This could be seen as dishonest, and could give people a reason to dispute their ability to act as an impartial, efficient Attorney. 

 

If an Attorney feels like they have no other option than to make a gift to themselves, they should contact our Lasting Power of Attorney solicitors. 

There are different ways your LPA Attorney can Act, if you are appointing more than one: they can either act "jointly" (which means that they must make all decisions together) or "jointly and severally" (which means that they can make decisions together or separately). Alternatively, they can be appointed "jointly" for some decisions, and "jointly and severally" for other decisions. 

 

Quite often, people automatically think that they would want their Attorneys to act "jointly". However, one issue with this can be that if one of the Attorneys is unable to act, for example if they are out of the country, if they become ill, or if they predecease you, this could invalidate the document, and mean that none of your Attorneys can act at all. 

 

Therefore, more often than not, it’s better to appoint your Attorneys to act "jointly and severally". 

 

In relation to how to appoint your Attorneys to act, it’s always best to seek legal advice from our Lasting Power of Attorney solicitors. Contact our LPA Solicitors if you are looking to make an Lasting Power of Attorney, and get it right first time. 

In order to be valid, your Lasting Power of Attorney will need to be registered. The public body responsible for registering Lasting Powers of Attorney is the Ofifice of the Public Guardian.  

 

You can find out more about the gov.uk guidance in relation to the Office of the Public Guardian, here.  

 

You can make a Lasting Power of Attorney without registering it immediately. However, if there are any issues with the documents (i.e. you have made a mistake when you drafted them, or you have not signed them correctly), this could mean that the documents cannot be registered until the issues have been corrected. If the Donor has already lost capacity when the application is being made to register the documents, this could cause problems, such as being unable to proceed with the registration. 

Once the documents have all been correctly signed, they can be submitted for registration to the Office of the Public Guardian. 

 

The Office of the Public Guardian will start the registration process, which normally takes in the region of 8 to 10 weeks. This includes a 4 week legally mandated waiting period, in which the Office of the Public Guardian has to wait to register the documents to give people time to object or raise any concerns to the registration. 

Many people assume that it is complicatied and time-consuming to set up an LPA, but this does not have to be the case. Because of this, people often put off setting up their LPA, and many unfortunately do so until it is too late and they are not in a fit state to get things in order.  

 

There are many things to consider when setting up your Lasting Powers of Attorney. These include, but are not limited to:- 

 

 

The number of different factors involved in the process can leave many people feeling overwhelmed. Here at MG Legal local solicitors, we work hard to ensure that everything is taken care of for you.