Most of us are reasonably comfortable deciding who should deal with our affairs after we die. Deciding who should step in while we are still alive, but unable to manage things ourselves, can feel much harder.
It is also much easier to put off.
The difficulty is that a lasting power of attorney cannot be made retrospectively. By the time somebody urgently needs help managing a bank account, dealing with a care home or making important medical decisions, they may no longer have the mental capacity required to create one.
The name makes an LPA sound rather more grand and remote than it really is. In practice, it can be used for very ordinary but essential things: paying the electricity bill, speaking to a bank, dealing with a pension, deciding where somebody should receive care or discussing treatment with doctors.
Quick answer: A lasting power of attorney, usually shortened to LPA, is a legal document through which somebody aged 18 or over appoints trusted people to make decisions for them. There are two types: one for property and financial affairs and one for health and welfare. You must have mental capacity when you make an LPA, and it cannot be used until it has been registered with the Office of the Public Guardian. Registration currently costs £92 for each LPA.
This guide explains the two types of LPA, how to choose attorneys, how the forms are made and registered, what they cost and what happens if somebody loses capacity without one.
Jurisdiction: This guide covers lasting powers of attorney made under the law of England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland have different systems.
Contents
- What is a lasting power of attorney?
- What are the two types of LPA?
- Who should consider making an LPA?
- What mental capacity do you need to make an LPA?
- How should you choose your attorneys?
- What if you appoint more than one attorney?
- Should you appoint replacement attorneys?
- What does the certificate provider do?
- Preferences and instructions: What is the difference?
- How do you make and register an LPA?
- How much does a lasting power of attorney cost?
- How long does LPA registration take?
- Health LPAs and life-sustaining treatment
- What can an attorney do, and what are their duties?
- What happens if there is no LPA?
- Can you change or cancel an LPA?
- Are LPAs becoming fully digital?
- Frequently asked questions
What is a lasting power of attorney?
A lasting power of attorney is a legal document made under the Mental Capacity Act 2005.
The person making it is called the donor. The people they appoint are called attorneys. Despite the name, an attorney does not have to be a lawyer. Most are relatives, friends or other trusted people.
An LPA does not transfer ownership of your money or property to an attorney. It gives them legal authority to make particular decisions or act for you within the limits of the LPA and the Mental Capacity Act.
Nor does making an LPA mean giving up control of your life.
For as long as you can make a particular decision yourself, your own decision comes first. Attorneys must support you to make your own decisions wherever possible rather than taking over simply because an LPA exists.
A property and financial affairs LPA can, if you choose, allow an attorney to help while you still have capacity. A health and welfare attorney, by contrast, can make a decision only when you lack capacity to make that particular decision yourself.
An LPA also ends when you die. From that point, your executors or administrators deal with your estate. A Will and an LPA therefore do entirely different jobs: one plans for your lifetime, the other for what happens after death.
What are the two types of LPA?
There are two separate types of lasting power of attorney. Making one does not give your attorneys authority over the matters covered by the other.
Property and financial affairs LPA
A property and financial affairs LPA can allow attorneys to deal with matters such as:
- bank and building society accounts;
- bills and household expenses;
- benefits, pensions and tax;
- savings and investments;
- insurance and debts; and
- buying, managing or selling property.
You do not have to own a house or have substantial savings for this type of LPA to be useful. Somebody may need help with an ordinary current account, rent, utility bills and benefits just as urgently as somebody else needs help managing an investment portfolio.
You decide whether your financial attorneys may act as soon as the LPA has been registered, with your permission while you still have capacity, or only once you lack capacity to make the relevant financial decisions.
The Government’s current official guide to making and registering an LPA explains these choices in detail.
Health and welfare LPA
A health and welfare LPA can cover decisions about matters such as medical treatment, care and support, where you live and aspects of your day-to-day welfare.
It can be used only when you lack capacity to make the particular decision.
That qualification matters. Capacity is not an on-off switch. Somebody may be unable to understand a complicated decision about moving into residential care but still be perfectly capable of deciding what to wear, what to eat or whom they want to see.
A health and welfare attorney must therefore consider capacity decision by decision rather than simply concluding that the donor can no longer decide anything.
Who should consider making an LPA?
LPAs are often discussed as though they belong exclusively to advanced old age or a diagnosis of dementia.
That misses much of the point.
Capacity can be lost or impaired through a stroke, brain injury, serious accident, coma, neurological illness or unexpected medical complication. It can also fluctuate.
A younger person may have just as much need for somebody to deal with their mortgage, business, bank account or young family’s finances if they suddenly cannot do so themselves.
One misconception is particularly persistent: that a husband, wife, civil partner or adult child can simply take over if something happens.
They cannot automatically operate accounts in your sole name, sell property belonging to you or make every health decision merely because of the family relationship. Joint accounts and jointly owned property may solve some practical problems, but they do not provide general legal authority.
The real reason for making an LPA is therefore less about age than choice. You decide in advance who you trust to act if help is ever needed.
What mental capacity do you need to make an LPA?
You must be at least 18 and have the mental capacity to make the LPA when you create it.
A diagnosis of dementia, brain injury or mental illness does not automatically mean it is too late. The question is whether you can understand and make this particular decision at the relevant time.
Broadly, that means understanding what the LPA is, who you are appointing, what authority they will receive and the consequences of creating it.
You must also be able to use or weigh that information in making your decision and communicate your choice.
Someone is allowed to choose an attorney whom other family members dislike. They are also allowed to make choices other people consider unwise. An unpopular decision is not the same thing as an incapacitous one.
Where capacity is doubtful, fluctuating or likely to be challenged later, it may be sensible to involve an appropriately skilled professional and keep clear evidence of the donor’s understanding at the time.
My separate guide explains how mental capacity is assessed and who can carry out an assessment.
Once somebody no longer has the capacity required to understand and make an LPA, another person cannot simply sign one for them. The opportunity has passed.
How should you choose your attorneys?
This is the part of the process I would spend most time thinking about.
Forms can be corrected. A poor choice of attorney can be much harder to undo after capacity has been lost.
An individual attorney must be at least 18 and have mental capacity themselves. Someone who is bankrupt or subject to a Debt Relief Order cannot act as an attorney under a property and financial affairs LPA, although that does not prevent them acting under a health and welfare LPA.
You can appoint relatives, friends or a professional. You can also choose different attorneys for your two LPAs.
Someone who is excellent at dealing with money may not be the person you would want discussing difficult treatment or care decisions. There is no prize for appointing the same people to both documents simply for neatness.
I would ask four practical questions:
- Do I trust this person completely?
- Will they listen to me rather than assume they know best?
- Can they deal reliably with paperwork, organisations and practical decisions?
- Will they remain calm if family members or professionals disagree?
Also talk to the proposed attorney before putting their name on the form. Being trusted enough to be appointed is flattering; actually acting as an attorney can involve years of responsibility.
The Government has further guidance on choosing an attorney.
What if you appoint more than one attorney?
You can appoint one attorney or several. If you appoint more than one, you must decide how they will make decisions.
Jointly
If attorneys act jointly, they must make the relevant decisions together.
That can provide reassurance where substantial financial decisions are involved, but it is inflexible. If one joint attorney permanently becomes unable to act, the others may no longer be able to make those joint decisions unless the LPA and any replacement arrangements preserve the authority.
Jointly and severally
Attorneys appointed jointly and severally can act together or independently.
This is often more practical. One attorney can speak to the bank while another deals with an energy supplier or care provider. If one attorney permanently stops acting, the others can generally continue.
The trade-off is obvious: an attorney may be able to act without first obtaining the others’ agreement.
A mixture of both
You can require attorneys to act jointly for specified decisions and jointly and severally for everything else.
For example, you might require them all to agree before selling your home while allowing day-to-day financial decisions to be made individually.
This can work well, but elaborate drafting can create traps. An arrangement which requires a family diagram to understand it is probably worth reconsidering before the form is signed.
Should you appoint replacement attorneys?
A replacement attorney can step in if an original attorney permanently stops acting.
That might happen because the original attorney dies, loses capacity, formally gives up the role or, for a financial LPA, becomes bankrupt or subject to a Debt Relief Order.
A spouse or civil partner’s appointment will also normally end if the marriage or civil partnership legally ends, unless the LPA validly provides otherwise.
A replacement is not a temporary stand-in because an attorney is abroad for a fortnight or too busy to deal with something.
Replacement arrangements become particularly important where attorneys have been appointed jointly. Without a workable replacement structure, the loss of one attorney can have wider consequences for the LPA.
There is no need to appoint replacements simply for the sake of filling every box, but it is worth asking what would happen if your first-choice attorney could no longer act five or ten years from now.
What does the certificate provider do?
Every LPA needs a certificate provider.
The certificate provider is an important safeguard. They confirm that the donor understands the LPA, is making it freely and that there is no apparent fraud, undue pressure or other reason why the document should not be made.
They must be at least 18 and either:
- someone who has known the donor well for at least two years; or
- someone with appropriate professional skills to assess the donor’s understanding and freedom to make the LPA.
A person who has known you for two years must actually know you sufficiently well to carry out the role. Simply recognising somebody from the local shop or seeing them occasionally at the bus stop does not make them a suitable certificate provider.
An attorney or replacement attorney cannot act as the certificate provider, and there are further restrictions affecting relatives and certain people connected with the donor or attorneys.
If there is any uncertainty, use the Office of the Public Guardian’s current LPA guidance to check eligibility before the document is signed.
Preferences and instructions: What is the difference?
The LPA allows you to include both preferences and instructions, but they do different jobs.
Preferences tell your attorneys things you would like them to take into account. They are not binding in the same way as an instruction.
You might, for example, explain that you would prefer to remain living close to a particular family member or that you have a longstanding approach to investments which you would like continued where appropriate.
Instructions are binding. Your attorneys must follow them.
That makes instructions powerful, but it also makes bad drafting dangerous.
It is tempting to anticipate every eventuality. The problem is that an instruction written today may prevent an attorney responding sensibly to circumstances nobody could foresee.
Instructions also cannot give attorneys powers which the law itself withholds from them. They cannot, for example, simply authorise unlimited gifts of the donor’s money.
If you want unusual restrictions, have a business or complicated investments, or are trying to regulate substantial gifts or family financial arrangements, this is one of the points at which individual advice can be worthwhile.
How do you make and register an LPA?
You can prepare an LPA through the Government’s online service or by using paper forms.
The online system guides you through the questions and helps identify some common mistakes, but the current process is not completely digital. The document still has to be printed and signed. Digital signatures cannot currently be used.
The basic process is:
- Choose whether to make a property and financial affairs LPA, a health and welfare LPA, or both.
- Choose your attorneys and any replacements.
- Decide how multiple attorneys will make decisions.
- Consider any preferences and instructions.
- Choose a suitable certificate provider.
- Complete and sign the document in the required order.
- Notify any people you have chosen to be told about the registration.
- Apply to the Office of the Public Guardian to register the LPA.
You can start through the Government’s official service for making a lasting power of attorney.
The signing order matters
An LPA is not a document on which everybody can casually sign whichever page happens to reach them first.
The donor signs first, with their signature witnessed. The certificate provider signs after the donor. The attorneys and replacement attorneys then sign their sections, with their signatures witnessed.
Everyone must sign the same original LPA. Attorneys may witness one another’s signatures, but they cannot witness the donor’s signature.
Getting the sequence or formalities wrong can delay registration and may require parts of the document to be completed again.
People to notify
You can name up to five people to be notified when the LPA is sent for registration.
This is optional, but it provides an additional safeguard. Somebody who has been notified has three weeks to raise permitted concerns with the Office of the Public Guardian.
The purpose is not to give relatives a vote on whether they approve of your choice of attorneys. Objections must fall within the permitted grounds, which can include concerns about fraud, pressure or whether the document is valid.
How much does a lasting power of attorney cost?
The Office of the Public Guardian currently charges £92 to register each LPA.
If you make both types, the total registration fees are therefore £184.
You may pay less if your income is low. The donor can currently apply for a 50% fee reduction if their income before tax is below £12,000 a year. A full fee exemption may be available to donors receiving certain means-tested benefits.
The rules and application form are available in the Government’s guidance on reduced LPA registration fees.
Those are Office of the Public Guardian fees only.
You do not have to employ a solicitor to make an LPA. If you choose professional help, the professional fee is separate and will depend on the work involved.
There is a good case for advice where capacity is uncertain, family relationships are difficult, the donor has a business or overseas interests, attorneys are to act under unusual arrangements or complicated instructions are proposed.
How long does LPA registration take?
As at September 2026, the Office of the Public Guardian says that it is taking around 8 to 10 weeks to process and register an LPA where there are no problems with the application.
That includes a statutory waiting period.
An LPA cannot be used until registration is complete. This is why I would normally register a completed LPA rather than sign it and leave it in a drawer for a future emergency.
There is another practical reason to register early. If the Office of the Public Guardian identifies a problem, it is much easier to correct or remake the document while the donor still has capacity.
Waiting until the donor has already lost capacity can turn a correctable drafting mistake into a much more serious problem.
Current processing information is published by the Office of the Public Guardian.
Health LPAs and life-sustaining treatment
A health and welfare LPA asks you to decide whether your attorneys should have authority to give or refuse consent to life-sustaining treatment if you later lack capacity.
Life-sustaining treatment means treatment which the healthcare professional considers necessary to keep you alive. What falls within that description depends on the circumstances and may include surgery, ventilation, artificial nutrition or hydration, antibiotics or other treatment.
If you give your attorneys authority over life-sustaining treatment, they must still act within the Mental Capacity Act and make decisions in your best interests. They cannot demand treatment which the clinical team does not consider appropriate.
An LPA should also be considered alongside any advance decision to refuse treatment you have made.
The relationship between the two can depend on what each document covers and when they were made. A later LPA giving an attorney authority over particular treatment may affect an earlier advance decision, while a later valid and applicable advance decision can restrict what an attorney appointed earlier may consent to.
My separate guide explains how living wills and advance decisions to refuse treatment work.
What can an attorney do, and what are their duties?
An attorney receives authority. They do not receive a free hand.
They must follow the Mental Capacity Act, the terms of the LPA and the legal duties attached to the role.
Among other things, attorneys must support the donor to make their own decisions wherever possible, act in the donor’s best interests where a decision cannot be made, take account of the donor’s wishes and values, avoid conflicts of interest and keep appropriate records.
A financial attorney should normally keep the donor’s money separate from their own.
The Office of the Public Guardian’s guidance for people acting under an LPA explains those duties in more detail.
Can an attorney give away the donor’s money?
Only to a limited extent.
The statutory power to make gifts is deliberately narrow. Ordinary reasonable gifts may be possible on customary occasions or to charities the donor supported, but substantial gifts, transfers of property and many inheritance-planning arrangements require authority from the Court of Protection.
An attorney cannot simply distribute an elderly parent’s assets early because the children will probably inherit them eventually.
The same caution applies to transferring the donor’s house in an attempt to avoid care charges. My separate guide explains the risks of giving away a home to avoid care home fees.
Can an attorney sell the donor’s house?
A property and financial affairs attorney may be able to sell the donor’s home where the LPA gives sufficient authority and the decision is lawfully made.
Particular care is needed where the attorney or somebody connected with them wants to buy the property because that creates an obvious conflict of interest.
What happens if there is no LPA?
If somebody loses capacity without having made a suitable LPA, their family does not automatically acquire the missing legal authority.
For substantial property and financial decisions, somebody may need to apply to the Court of Protection to be appointed as a deputy.
That is not simply an LPA made after the event.
The court decides whether a deputy should be appointed and who that person should be. The deputy is then subject to court authority and ongoing supervision by the Office of the Public Guardian.
For health and welfare matters, many individual decisions can be made under the Mental Capacity Act best-interests framework without appointing a welfare deputy. The Court of Protection can intervene where necessary, particularly in serious or disputed cases.
This is why the most important distinction between an LPA and deputyship is not simply cost.
With an LPA, you choose the people who will act while you still have capacity to choose them.
Can you change or cancel an LPA?
You can cancel an LPA while you retain the mental capacity to do so.
A registered LPA will normally be revoked formally using a deed of revocation and the Office of the Public Guardian must be notified.
You should not simply cross out an attorney’s name or write new instructions onto the registered document.
Some administrative changes, such as a new address or change of name, can be reported. But changing attorneys, the way they make decisions or substantive instructions will usually require a new LPA.
If you are replacing an existing LPA, think about the sequence. Revoking the old document before the replacement has been registered could leave a gap in authority.
The Government explains how to end a lasting power of attorney.
Are LPAs becoming fully digital?
Eventually, but the existing system remains in place for now.
The Powers of Attorney Act 2023 created the framework for a modernised LPA service with a digital route and new safeguards. The new system has not yet replaced the current process.
As at September 2026, you can prepare an LPA online, but it must still be printed and signed in the required way before registration. Digital signatures cannot currently be used.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need both types of lasting power of attorney?
You can make either type or both. A property and financial affairs LPA does not allow an attorney to make health decisions, and a health and welfare LPA gives no authority to operate bank accounts or manage finances.
Many people make both because they cover different risks.
Can I make an LPA after being diagnosed with dementia?
Possibly. A diagnosis does not automatically determine mental capacity.
You can make an LPA if you still have the capacity to understand and make that particular decision. Where capacity is borderline or likely to be disputed, careful assessment and evidence may be important.
Can my financial attorney act while I still have capacity?
Yes, if the registered property and financial affairs LPA was made on that basis and you permit them to help.
A health and welfare attorney cannot make a decision for you while you retain capacity to make that decision yourself.
Can my attorney change my Will?
No. Authority under an LPA does not allow an attorney to make or rewrite the donor’s Will.
If somebody lacks the testamentary capacity to make a Will and a change is required, the Court of Protection can in an appropriate case be asked to authorise a statutory Will.
Does a lasting power of attorney continue after death?
No. The attorney’s authority ends when the donor dies. The estate is then dealt with by the executors named in the Will or, where there is no Will, the administrators.
Can I make an LPA entirely online?
Not under the current system. You can use the Government’s online service to prepare the LPA, but it must still be printed and signed. A fully modernised digital system is being developed but has not yet replaced the existing process.
Does an LPA work outside England and Wales?
An LPA is made under the law of England and Wales. Whether it will be recognised in another country depends on that country’s law and procedures.
If you own substantial overseas assets or spend significant time abroad, obtain advice in the relevant jurisdiction rather than assuming the English and Welsh LPA will be accepted.
Choose before somebody else has to
The real value of a lasting power of attorney is not the form itself. It is the opportunity to choose.
You decide who should act, whether different people should deal with money and welfare, what guidance they should have and, in a health LPA, whether they should be able to make decisions about life-sustaining treatment.
The awkward part is that all of those choices have to be made while you still have the capacity to make them.
I would therefore spend less time worrying about whether an LPA feels premature and more time asking whether the people named in it are people I would genuinely trust with a difficult decision on a difficult day.
A well-made LPA is not about handing your independence away. Properly used, it does the opposite: it records who you have chosen to help and requires them to support your own decision-making for as long as possible.
Last legally reviewed: 2 September 2026
This guide is based on general principles of English and Welsh law, is intended for informational purposes only, and does not constitute legal advice or establish a professional relationship.
