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How To Find Out If Someone Has An Attorney Acting

Posted on 31st July 2020

If you are appointed as an Attorney on behalf of your loved one, you may find it difficult to constantly have to provide separate organisations with proof that you are, indeed, entitled to deal with your loved one’s affairs.

To help make an Attorney’s life easier, the Office of the Public Guardian have unveiled their plans to enable the status of an Attorney to be checked online, as opposed to using the paper application form.

If you have not heard of a Lasting Power of Attorney before, there are two types of documents which can be made: one relating to Financial Decisions and the other relating to Health and Care Decisions. The Donor (the person making the document) can appoint Attorneys to act on their behalf, if they no longer have capacity, or – in relation to Financial Decisions – at the Donor’s direction, if they retain capacity.

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The Lasting Powers of Attorney need to be registered before they are valid, and the organisation who deals with this is the Office of the Public Guardian themselves. Previously, organisations would require the original document – once it had been registered – to be able to liaise with an Attorney. The new system attempts to reduce this requirement, to allow the documentation to be viewed online by an organisation, by way of an access code.

Whilst this will, in theory, help many organisations to streamline the Attorney-checking process, it does make our Lasting Power of Attorney Solicitors wonder how secure the process will be; there are many questions that – we imagine – the Office of the Public Guardian will need to issue guidance or replies to before the plans are implemented.

Our Lasting Power of Attorney Solicitors will keep you updated as more guidance and updates become available from the Office of the Public Guardian, however, if you need more information about Lasting Powers of Attorney and how to make these in the meantime, contact our team online, here, or email enquiries@mglegal.co.uk.