A Lasting Power of Attorney cannot be used until registered at the Court of Protection. A Property and Finance LPA, depending on how you choose to set it up originally, can be used while you are still in good health (like an ordinary power of attorney would be), or only when your attorney(s) believe that you no longer have the mental capability of running your own affairs. A Health and WelfareLPA cannot be registred until such time that the attorney(s) believe this to be the case.
There are several forms to complete and strict procedures to follow - errors, sometimes quite small, can result in the application being rejected, the Court fee (of up to £130) being forfeited and a completely new application and fee being required. It commonly takes 3 - 4 months for completion of the registration. Easier then and less stressful to let us take care of it - it's something we do week in, week out. And if we make a typing mistake, we'll bear the cost, not you!
For a nominal fee we will take care of registration for you, either at the time of setting up the LPA or later on. We'll deal with any queries for you and then return the registered document(s) to you when the Court have completed the registration.
Enduring Power of Attorney or EPA was the less complex forerunner of LPA, and it governed only material (i.e. property and finance) matters. You can no longer take out a new EPA, but if you have this document previously set up, it can still be used as before. But if the client does then lose their mental capacity, the EPA must be registered at Court for continued use. We can also handle EPA registration for you, regardless of whether we provided the original EPA, although of course only if we establish first that it is error free - we cannot be held responsible for someone else's error.