Lasting Powers of Attorney (LPAs) are legal documents that allow you to authorise someone you trust to make decisions in your best interests and act on your behalf, if the worst should happen and you lose capacity. The person you choose to make decisions for you under an LPA is known as your ‘attorney’ or ‘donee’ and you are known as the ‘donor’.
There are two types of Lasting Power of Attorney:
Property and financial affairs – this LPA can be used for dealing with any of your financial and property matters, for example, dealing with banks, authorising payments through to property transactions and more. This can be used while you still have mental capacity which can be useful if you become less mobile or even if you travel a lot.
Health and welfare – ensures your preferences for medical treatment and ongoing care are taken into account if you become unable to make decisions for yourself. This can be used, for example, if you are undergoing surgery and urgent decisions need to be made whilst you are under anaesthetic or in longer term health conditions. You can also opt to give your attorney the power to choose whether you are given life sustaining treatment; the decision to give them this power is taken at the time you make the LPA. It must be noted that a health and welfare LPA can only be used when you lose mental capacity to make decisions about health and welfare.
LPA’s can only be set up whilst you still have the mental capacity to make the relevant decisions. Many people make the mistake of leaving it too late, which then means you cannot authorise an LPA and would have to consider court proceedings through the Court of Protection to obtain ‘Deputyship’. The latter are more lengthy and more costly proceedings.
The application process for appointing an LPA requires a certificate provider to sign it and expert determination as to whether the donor (the one making the LPA) has capacity to make the LPA. Our team member at Makka Solicitors Ltd has over 15 years of experience of Mental Capacity assessments pursuant to the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and therefore the process can be streamlined in that we are able to deal with LPA applications swiftly and efficiently.
In addition, we are also able to deal with the challenges to an Attorney’s appointment and actions, supporting you in disputing the actions of an attorney or making an application to the Court of Protection to set aside an LPA.
The applications for LPAs for Property & Financial Affairs and Personal Welfare are dealt with separately. Our fees for preparing an LPA application are listed as follows;
| Description of Work to be Undertaken | Our fees
Fixed Rate |
| Preparing LPA application for both Health and Welfare & Property and Affairs | £750 plus VAT |
| Disbursements | |
| Office of Public Guardian (OPG) fees for Health and Welfare | £82.00 |
| Office of Public Guardian (OPG) fees for Property and Affairs | £82.00 |
| Land Registry Office Copy Entry | £3.90 |
All other work, in terms of challenging an Attorney’s appointment, is charged out at a rate of standard hourly rates for work conducted on an hourly basis. We work hard to ensure that an estimate is provided at the onset and any charges beyond our original estimate are discussed with you at an earlier stage.
Our standard hourly rates for solicitors are as follows:
| Solicitor Grade | Hourly Rates |
| A – Solicitors and legal executives with over 8 years’ experience | £280.00 |
| B – Solicitors and legal executives with over 4 years’ experience | £230.00 |
| C- Other solicitors or legal executives and fee earners with 1 to 4 years’ experience | £180.00 |
| D – Trainee solicitors, paralegals and other fee earners | £120.00 |