Which type of LPA do you actually need?
Almost everyone who asks this question ends up needing both, but for different reasons and often with different attorneys. Work through the branches below to find your own starting point. If more than one describes you, the earliest one in the list is usually the one to act on first.
- 1 You are over 18, healthy, and have never made one→ Make both. Property and financial affairs is the one your bank, pension provider and any future conveyancer will ask for; health and welfare is the one that gives your family standing in a hospital corridor. £184 covers both, once, for life. There is no expiry date on a registered LPA.
- 2 You want someone to help with banking now, while you are perfectly well→ A property and financial affairs LPA. It can be used as soon as it is registered, with your permission - so an attorney can pay bills during a hospital stay or a long trip abroad without you giving up any control. You can still do everything yourself. A health and welfare LPA cannot help here: it stays dormant until capacity is lost.
- 3 You are worried mainly about care home and medical decisions→ A health and welfare LPA - but do not stop there. Care decisions almost always come with care bills, and only a property and financial affairs attorney can release the money to pay them. A health and welfare LPA on its own regularly leaves families able to choose a care home but unable to fund it.
- 4 You already hold an enduring power of attorney made before October 2007→ Your EPA is still valid, but it covers property and finances only. Make a health and welfare LPA to fill the gap. Remember that an EPA must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian once the donor starts to lose capacity - it is not an ongoing dormant document like a registered LPA.
- 5 You are helping a parent or partner whose memory is already changing→ Do it now, this month. Capacity is decision-specific under the Mental Capacity Act, and a diagnosis is not the same as incapacity - many people in the early stages can still validly make an LPA. Ask the GP to record a capacity assessment on the day, and consider a professional certificate provider so the document is difficult to challenge later.
- 6 Capacity has already been lost and there is no LPA→ The LPA route is closed. An application to the Court of Protection for a deputyship order is the only remaining option. It is more expensive, takes months rather than weeks, and comes with annual supervision and reporting - see the comparison further down this page.
What a lasting power of attorney actually is
An LPA is a legal document, created by the Mental Capacity Act 2005, in which one person - the donor - gives one or more people they trust, called attorneys, authority to make decisions on their behalf. It replaced the old enduring power of attorney system in October 2007. In England and Wales there are two separate LPAs, made on separate forms, registered separately, and each carrying its own £92 fee. They are not interchangeable and neither one implies the other.
Read the timing row in the table below more carefully than the rest. It is the difference people most often get wrong, and it changes what each document is actually for. A property and financial affairs LPA is a tool you can use while you are well. A health and welfare LPA is a contingency that sits unused unless the worst happens.
| Property and financial affairs | Health and welfare | |
|---|---|---|
| When it can be used | As soon as it is registered, with the donor's permission - even while the donor has full capacity | Only once the donor lacks capacity for the decision in question. No exceptions. |
| Registration fee | £92 | £92 |
| Core decisions covered | Bank and building society accounts, paying bills, benefits and tax, pensions and investments, buying or selling property, running a business | Medical treatment, where the donor lives, care arrangements, daily routine such as washing, dressing and diet, and who the donor has contact with |
| Life-sustaining treatment | Not applicable | A specific option on the form: the donor decides whether attorneys may consent to or refuse it, or whether that stays with doctors |
| Who will ask to see it | Banks, HMRC, the DWP, pension providers, conveyancers, utility companies | Hospitals, GPs, care homes, social workers, community care teams |
| Attorney restrictions | An attorney who is bankrupt or subject to a Debt Relief Order cannot act on this type | Bankruptcy does not disqualify an attorney here - the role involves no control of money |
| Practical value on its own | High - covers most of what a family needs day to day | Limited alone - you can choose the care home but cannot pay for it |
Notice the asymmetry in the last row. If someone genuinely can only afford one document today, the property and financial affairs LPA is the one that does more work - it keeps the household running. But the health and welfare LPA is the one that gives a family a legal voice when a hospital or local authority is proposing something the donor would have hated, and no amount of financial authority substitutes for it. Our full breakdown of LPA costs sets out what each route really costs once solicitors' fees and remissions are taken into account.
Write your will or set up Power of Attorney
Without an LPA in place, your family cannot legally manage your money if you lose capacity — only the Court of Protection can.
The capacity deadline: the one thing this page is really about
Making a lasting power of attorney is itself a decision. Like every other decision, it requires mental capacity. That single fact is the whole argument for not putting it off, and it is worth stating plainly rather than dramatically: if you lose capacity before you have made an LPA, you can never make one. Not with a doctor's help, not with a solicitor's help, not with your family's agreement. The document requires your understanding and your signature, and if those are no longer available the option has simply expired.
The Mental Capacity Act defines capacity carefully, and the definition is more generous than most people assume. Capacity is decision-specific and time-specific. Someone may lack the capacity to manage a share portfolio but retain the capacity to decide who they trust to do it for them - and it is the second, simpler question that an LPA turns on. A person is assumed to have capacity unless it is shown otherwise. An unwise decision is not evidence of incapacity. Fluctuating conditions mean capacity can be present on a good day and absent on a bad one.
What that adds up to in practice is encouraging: a diagnosis of dementia, a stroke with partial recovery, or the early stages of a degenerative condition do not automatically close the door. Many people in those situations can and do make valid LPAs. But it also explains why the timing is so unforgiving. Capacity rarely disappears on a scheduled date. It slips, and the family only notices retrospectively, often after an acute event - a fall, a stroke, a sudden decline - has already removed it.
The events that make an LPA necessary are, almost by definition, the events that make it impossible to create. A severe stroke on a Tuesday morning removes both the need to wait and the ability to act, in the same instant. There is no window afterwards in which the family can quickly arrange one.
This is not a reason to be frightened. It is a reason to treat the LPA as an ordinary piece of admin done in advance, in the same category as making a will or noting down where the insurance documents are - something you handle calmly on a quiet weekend, decades before it might matter, and then forget about. A registered LPA sits dormant and costs nothing to keep. It only ever helps.
If you leave it too late: LPA versus Court of Protection deputyship
When capacity has already been lost and no LPA exists, the remaining route is an application to the Court of Protection to be appointed a deputy - a process we cover in full in our guide to Court of Protection deputyship. Deputies do a similar job to attorneys, but the court appoints them rather than the person themselves, and the court keeps watching afterwards. The comparison below uses the GOV.UK fee schedule as at July 2026.
| Lasting power of attorney | Court of Protection deputyship | |
|---|---|---|
| When you can arrange it | Only while the donor has capacity | Only after capacity has been lost |
| Who chooses the decision-maker | The donor, in advance, on their own terms | The court, applying its view of the person's best interests |
| Fee to set up | £92 per type, £184 for both | £432 application, plus £100 new deputy assessment and a possible £100 hearing fee. A separate application is needed for each type. |
| Ongoing cost | None. A registered LPA lasts until it is revoked or the donor dies. | Annual supervision fee of £320 (general) or £35 (minimal, where assets are under £21,000), plus an annual security bond premium. |
| Typical time to authority | 8-10 weeks to register, then available whenever it is needed | Commonly several months from application to order, with nobody authorised in the meantime |
| Ongoing obligations | Attorneys must follow the Mental Capacity Act and keep records, but file nothing routinely | Annual report and accounts to the Office of the Public Guardian, every year the deputyship runs |
| Health and welfare decisions | Straightforward - make the health and welfare LPA | Rarely granted. Courts generally prefer decision-by-decision best-interests rulings for health matters. |
The money is the least of it. Families who have been through a deputyship application describe the gap as the hard part - the months in which the care home invoice arrives, the house cannot be marketed, the bank politely declines to discuss the account, and nobody has any authority to do anything. GOV.UK's become a deputy guidance covers the application itself in detail if you are already in that position.
Choosing your attorneys well
You can appoint up to four attorneys on each LPA. The choice matters more than any other decision on the form, because everything else is procedure and this is judgement. Two questions do most of the work: who do you trust, and how should they act together?
On trust, the useful test is not competence but honesty and availability. Attorneys do not need financial expertise - they can take advice, and a good attorney knows when to. What they cannot delegate is integrity, willingness to have awkward conversations with hospitals and banks, and enough contact with you to know what you would have wanted. A capable relative who lives nearby is usually more valuable than a sophisticated one who lives abroad, particularly for health and welfare decisions that arrive at short notice.
Jointly, or jointly and severally?
Where you appoint more than one attorney you must say how they act. This is the choice that most often causes practical trouble years later.
- Jointly means every single decision needs every attorney's agreement and signature. It is the maximum safeguard against one attorney acting alone. It is also brittle: if one attorney dies, loses capacity or simply becomes unreachable, the LPA can fail entirely unless you named a replacement. Routine admin becomes slow, and banks will insist on all signatures for everything.
- Jointly and severally means any one attorney can act alone. This is the option most people should choose. It survives the loss of an attorney, it works when one is on holiday and a decision cannot wait, and in practice families still consult each other - the legal structure just does not force them to.
- Jointly for some decisions, severally for others is permitted: you might require all attorneys to agree on selling the house while allowing any of them to pay the gas bill. It is a reasonable middle ground, but it must be drafted precisely. Vague wording here is a common reason for forms being returned.
Always name a replacement attorney. This is the cheapest insurance on the form, and it costs nothing extra. A replacement steps in automatically if an original attorney can no longer act. Without one, an LPA whose only attorney has died leaves the family back at the Court of Protection - having done everything right, and still ending up in the wrong place.
One more practical point that often goes unsaid: the two LPAs do not need identical attorneys. A daughter who is an accountant might be the obvious property and financial affairs attorney, while a son who lives ten minutes away is better placed for health and welfare. Splitting the roles by aptitude and geography is entirely normal, and frequently kinder to everyone involved. If you are already handling money on a parent's behalf, our guide to helping elderly parents with their finances covers the day-to-day mechanics that sit alongside the legal authority.
What attorneys can and cannot do
An attorney's authority is wide but bounded. The Mental Capacity Act 2005 sets the framework, and its principles are not decorative - the Office of the Public Guardian applies them when it investigates concerns, and the Court of Protection applies them when it removes attorneys.
- Act in the donor's best interests, not their own and not the family's
- Help the donor make their own decisions wherever they still can, rather than deciding for them
- Respect any unwise decision the donor is still capable of making
- Choose the least restrictive option that achieves the aim
- Keep the donor's money completely separate from their own
- Keep records of decisions and of money spent
- Follow any restrictions and consider any preferences written into the LPA
- Make or change the donor's will
- Pass the role on to somebody else
- Make gifts beyond customary occasions and amounts reasonable for the estate - larger gifts need Court of Protection approval
- Use the donor's money for their own benefit, or mix it with their own
- Decide about life-sustaining treatment unless the donor expressly granted that power on a health and welfare LPA
- Act at all under a health and welfare LPA while the donor still has capacity
- Act after the donor has died - authority ends immediately
The Office of the Public Guardian supervises attorneys and has a duty to investigate concerns raised about them. Anyone - a relative, a neighbour, a bank, a care home manager - can report worries. Where an attorney is found to be acting against the donor's interests, the Court of Protection can revoke the LPA and remove them, and serious financial abuse can be referred for prosecution. In practice, keeping clean records and a separate account is what protects an honest attorney as much as it protects the donor.
The certificate provider: the safeguard in the middle
Every LPA needs a certificate provider. Their job is narrow but important: they sign to confirm that the donor understands what the LPA does and what powers it grants, that nobody is putting pressure on the donor to make it, and that there is nothing else that would stop the LPA being valid. They are the reason an LPA cannot quietly be made by a family member on someone's behalf.
A certificate provider must be someone who has known the donor personally for at least two years, or a professional with the relevant skills - a GP, a solicitor, a registered social worker or another suitably qualified person. They must be 18 or over. They cannot be one of the attorneys or replacement attorneys, a family member of the donor or of an attorney, a business partner or employee of either, or someone running or working in a care home where the donor lives.
A trusted long-standing friend is perfectly adequate for most LPAs, and the OPG expects exactly that. Consider paying a professional - typically a GP or a solicitor - where the donor has a diagnosis affecting cognition, where the donor is frail or very elderly, where there is any family friction over who is being appointed, or where large sums or a business are involved. In those cases the certificate is not just a formality; it is the contemporaneous evidence that answers a challenge years later, when memories have faded and the donor can no longer speak for themselves.
Two other roles appear on the form. Replacement attorneys are named in advance to step in if an original attorney can no longer act - covered above, and always worth including. People to be notified are optional: you can name up to five people who will be told when the LPA is sent for registration, giving them a window to object if they believe something is wrong. Naming a sibling who is not an attorney is a common and sensible use of this, precisely because it removes the suspicion that something was arranged quietly.
Registration and how long it takes
An unregistered LPA is worth nothing. It does not sit as a half-valid document that can be activated in an emergency - until the Office of the Public Guardian has registered it and returned it, no attorney can do anything with it. This is why registering straight away, rather than "when we need it", is the right approach: registration is the slow part, and emergencies do not wait 8 to 10 weeks.
- Choose the roles. Attorneys, how they act together, replacement attorneys, a certificate provider, and any people to be notified.
- Complete the forms. Use the service on gov.uk/power-of-attorney. There is a separate form for each type. This is where you set out any restrictions (binding limits on your attorneys) and preferences (guidance they must consider), and where a health and welfare LPA asks the life-sustaining treatment question.
- Sign in the correct order. The donor signs first, then the certificate provider, then each attorney and replacement. Signing out of sequence is one of the most common reasons a form comes back.
- Notify anyone named as a person to be told, if you named any. They have a statutory window to raise objections with the OPG.
- Send it to the Office of the Public Guardian with the £92 fee, along with a fee remission or exemption claim if one applies.
- Wait for the stamped document to come back. GOV.UK gives 8 to 10 weeks where there are no mistakes; allow longer if the form needs correcting or the OPG is busy. Only then can the LPA be used.
- Distribute certified copies. Each attorney should have one, and it is worth lodging copies with the donor's bank, GP and any care provider before they are needed.
If the OPG returns an application because of an error, you can usually correct it and reapply. Where the repeat application is made within three months, the fee is £46 rather than a second full £92 - a useful safety net, but one you would rather not need. Our guide to LPA costs covers what each route really costs, including where paying for professional drafting earns its keep by avoiding exactly these rejections.
Fees, remission and exemption
The published fee is £92 per LPA in England and Wales, so a complete set of both types costs £184. A couple each making both documents therefore pay £368 in total. There is no separate charge for naming replacement attorneys or people to be notified, and no renewal fee - a registered LPA lasts until it is revoked or the donor dies.
| Situation | One LPA | Both types |
|---|---|---|
| Standard fee | £92 | £184 |
| Gross annual income under £12,000 - 50% remission | £46 | £92 |
| On a qualifying means-tested benefit - full exemption | Nil | Nil |
| Repeat application within 3 months after a correction | £46 | £92 |
| Solicitor-drafted, typical market range, plus the fee above | £300-£650 | £600-£1,300 |
Remission halves the fee where the donor's gross annual income is under £12,000. Note that it is the donor's income that is assessed, not the attorney's, and it is gross income before tax from all sources - employment, pensions, self-employment, rental income and interest. Capital and savings are not counted for this purpose.
Exemption removes the fee entirely where the donor receives certain means-tested benefits. These include Income Support, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance and the Guarantee Credit element of Pension Credit. That last one matters for this audience in particular: a great many pensioners on Guarantee Credit are entitled to make both LPAs for nothing and simply never realise it. Claims are made on the fee-reduction form submitted with the LPA, with a recent benefits award letter as evidence - do not send the fee first and try to reclaim it.
Enduring, lasting and ordinary: three different documents
"Power of attorney" is used loosely to mean three quite different things, and the differences are consequential. The one that catches people out most often is the ordinary power of attorney, which sounds like a lighter-touch version of an LPA and is in fact useless for the situation most people are worried about.
| Lasting (LPA) | Enduring (EPA) | Ordinary / general | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can you make one now? | Yes | No - EPAs could only be made before 1 October 2007 | Yes |
| What it covers | Property and financial affairs, health and welfare, or both | Property and financial affairs only - never health or care | Financial matters, often limited to a specific task or period |
| Survives loss of capacity? | Yes - that is the entire point | Yes, for finances, once registered | No - it ends automatically the moment capacity is lost |
| Registration | Must be registered with the OPG before use, at £92 | Usable unregistered while the donor has capacity; must be registered once the donor is losing or has lost capacity | No registration |
| What it is good for | Planning for any future loss of capacity, permanently | Still working, if you already have one - no need to replace it | A hospital stay, a long trip abroad, a house sale you cannot attend |
If you hold an old EPA, keep it - there is no requirement to convert it, and it does the financial job perfectly well. What it does not do is cover health, care or treatment, so the usual advice is to add a health and welfare LPA alongside it. Attorneys under an EPA also need to know their obligation to register: an EPA that has never been registered cannot be relied on once the donor's capacity has gone, and registering it at that point takes time the family may not have.
An ordinary power of attorney has its uses - it is quick, needs no registration, and is genuinely handy if you are having a knee replaced or spending six months overseas. But it terminates automatically on loss of capacity, which is precisely when a family most needs authority. It is not a substitute for an LPA and should never be treated as one.
What happens at death: the LPA stops, the executor starts
This is the most common misunderstanding we see, and it causes real problems. A lasting power of attorney ends the instant the donor dies. From that moment an attorney has no more legal standing over the deceased's affairs than a stranger. They cannot pay bills from the account, cannot close accounts, cannot sell the house, cannot arrange the funeral using the deceased's money, and cannot distribute possessions - even where they did all of those things lawfully the day before.
Authority passes instead to the executors named in the will, or to administrators appointed under the intestacy rules if there is no will. Where a grant is needed, they prove that authority with a grant of probate or letters of administration. It is entirely common - and often sensible - for the same person to be both attorney and executor, but they are separate legal roles with separate sources of authority, and one does not roll into the other. Our guide to an executor's duties sets out what that second role actually involves.
Practically, an attorney should do three things when a donor dies. Stop using the LPA immediately. Notify the Office of the Public Guardian, sending the original LPA document and a copy of the death certificate so the register can be updated. And hand over any records of the donor's finances to the executors, who will need them to value the estate. Continuing to operate an account after the death, even with good intentions, exposes the attorney personally.
Three scenarios
Situation: Bernadette has a will, a modest pension and a flat in Cardiff. She has never given LPAs a thought - nothing is wrong, and there is no reason to expect anything to be.
She makes both LPAs herself over two evenings using the GOV.UK service. She appoints her two adult children jointly and severally on both documents, and names her younger sister as replacement attorney on each. A friend of twenty years, who is not related to anyone involved, acts as certificate provider. On the health and welfare form she reads the life-sustaining treatment question carefully and decides to give her children the power to consent to or refuse it, having talked to them both about what she would want.
Total cost: £184. The documents come back stamped nine weeks later. She gives a certified copy to each child, lodges one with her bank and one with her GP surgery, and puts the originals with her will. She then does not think about them again.
This is what a well-handled LPA looks like: boring, cheap, done twenty years before it might be needed, and possibly never used at all. That is the outcome to aim for, not the exception.
Situation: Desmond's diagnosis came after a period of increasing confusion. He still knows exactly who he trusts and what he wants, but his daughter Nia is worried the window is closing.
Nia's instinct is right, and so is her assumption that a diagnosis alone does not remove capacity. The family acts within the month. Desmond's GP carries out a capacity assessment and records it, and a local solicitor drafts both LPAs and acts as certificate provider - a professional rather than a friend, deliberately, so that if a relative ever challenges the documents there is contemporaneous professional evidence that Desmond understood what he was signing and was not under pressure.
Desmond appoints Nia and his son Owain jointly and severally on the financial LPA, but Nia alone - who lives fifteen minutes away - on health and welfare, with Owain as replacement. The solicitor's fee is around £900 for the pair, plus £184 in registration fees.
Two years on, Desmond moves into residential care. Nia has the standing to argue about the care plan and Owain can release the money to pay for it. Neither of those things would have been possible had they waited another six months to "see how things go".
Situation: Emeka had a severe stroke on a Sunday. He survived, but cannot speak, write or communicate a decision. He had told his wife more than once that he would 'get round to' the paperwork.
There is no LPA and there can never be one now - making an LPA needs capacity, and Emeka's is gone. His wife Chidi must apply to the Court of Protection for a property and affairs deputyship: £432 to apply, £100 as a new deputy, a security bond to arrange, and solicitors' fees on top because the forms are demanding and she is grieving and exhausted.
The cost is not what she remembers afterwards. It is the months in between. The care home invoices arrive and she pays them from her own savings. A planned downsizing move cannot proceed because the house is in Emeka's sole name and nobody can sign. The bank will not discuss his current account with her at all. And because the court rarely grants health and welfare deputyships, she has no formal standing in decisions about his treatment either - she is consulted as his wife, but nothing more.
Once appointed, Chidi pays £320 a year in supervision fees and files an annual report and accounts with the Office of the Public Guardian for as long as the deputyship runs. Every single part of this would have been avoided by two forms and £184, at any point in the previous fifty years.
Common questions
These are the questions that come up most often, answered against the GOV.UK position as at July 2026. If your situation is more complicated than any of these - a business, a blended family, an attorney overseas, or a capacity question that is genuinely borderline - that is the point at which paying a solicitor stops being optional.
Lasting power of attorney: your questions answered
- What is a lasting power of attorney?
- A lasting power of attorney (LPA) is a legal document made under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 in which you - the donor - appoint one or more people you trust, called attorneys, to make decisions for you if you become unable to make them yourself. There are two separate types in England and Wales: property and financial affairs, and health and welfare. Each is made on its own form and registered separately with the Office of the Public Guardian at £92 each. An LPA is not the same as a will. A will only takes effect after you die; an LPA only works while you are alive, and it ends the moment you die.
- How much does a lasting power of attorney cost in 2026?
- The Office of the Public Guardian charges £92 to register each LPA in England and Wales. Because there are two types, most people making a full set pay £184. If a form is returned for correction and you reapply within three months, the repeat application fee is £46 rather than a full £92. If your gross annual income is under £12,000 you pay half - £46 per LPA. If you receive certain means-tested benefits, including Income Support, income-related Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker's Allowance or the Guarantee Credit part of Pension Credit, you pay nothing at all. The forms are designed to be completed without a solicitor on GOV.UK. If you do instruct one, expect roughly £300 to £650 per LPA on top of the registration fee.
- What are the two types of power of attorney?
- A property and financial affairs LPA covers money: running bank accounts, paying bills, dealing with HMRC and the DWP, managing investments and pensions, and buying or selling property. A health and welfare LPA covers personal decisions: medical treatment, where you live, day-to-day care, your daily routine and, if you specifically choose it, consenting to or refusing life-sustaining treatment. The critical difference is timing. A property and financial affairs LPA can be used as soon as it is registered, with your permission, while you still have capacity. A health and welfare LPA can only ever be used once you have lost the capacity to make the decision in question. That distinction catches a lot of families out.
- What happens if you lose mental capacity without an LPA?
- The LPA option closes permanently, because making an LPA is itself a decision that requires capacity. Your family cannot simply step in. Banks will not discuss the account, the local authority will not accept instructions about care, and a house cannot be sold. Instead someone has to apply to the Court of Protection to be appointed as a deputy. The application fee is £432, there is a £100 assessment fee for new deputies and a possible £100 hearing fee, and a property and affairs deputy usually has to buy a security bond. Deputies then pay an annual supervision fee - £320 for general supervision, or £35 for minimal supervision where the person's assets are under £21,000 - and must file annual accounts with the Office of the Public Guardian. Applications commonly take several months. The £92 you would have spent on an LPA looks very small in hindsight.
- Can you set up a power of attorney for someone with dementia?
- Sometimes, yes - but it depends on capacity, not diagnosis. Under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 capacity is decision-specific and time-specific. A person is assumed to have capacity unless it is shown otherwise, and an unwise decision is not evidence of incapacity. Many people in the early stages of dementia still understand what an LPA is, who they are appointing and what powers they are handing over, which is the understanding the law actually requires. If that is the case they can validly make one. Where there is a diagnosis, it is sensible to ask a GP or another suitable professional to act as certificate provider or to record a contemporaneous capacity assessment, so the LPA is harder to challenge later. Do not wait to see how things progress - waiting is what closes the door.
- Does a power of attorney end when someone dies?
- Yes, immediately and completely. This is the single most common misunderstanding about LPAs. The moment the donor dies, every LPA they made ceases to have any effect. An attorney has no authority to pay bills from the deceased's account, close accounts, sell the house, distribute possessions or deal with the estate in any way. Authority passes to the executors named in the will, who prove their authority with a grant of probate, or to the administrators if there is no will. Attorneys should notify the Office of the Public Guardian of the death and send the original LPA and a copy of the death certificate. If you are an attorney who is also the executor, you are still starting again in a different legal role - see our guide to executor duties.
- How long does it take to register an LPA?
- GOV.UK states that registration takes 8 to 10 weeks if there are no mistakes in the application, and the Office of the Public Guardian works to a longer statutory service standard, so it is realistic to allow anywhere from around 8 weeks to several months in a busy period or where the form needs correcting. Built into that period is a statutory four-week waiting time during which anyone you named as a person to be notified can object. Crucially, an LPA cannot be used at all until it has been registered and returned. Registering it early does not mean giving up control - a property and financial affairs LPA sits dormant until you allow it to be used.
- What is the difference between an enduring power of attorney and a lasting power of attorney?
- Enduring powers of attorney (EPAs) were the predecessor system and could only be made before 1 October 2007. If you made one before that date it is still valid and you do not need to replace it, but it covers property and financial affairs only - it gives no authority over health, care or treatment decisions. An EPA also has a different registration rule: it can be used unregistered while the donor has capacity, and the attorney has a duty to register it with the Office of the Public Guardian once the donor is losing, or has lost, capacity. Many people with an old EPA make a health and welfare LPA alongside it to close the gap.
- What can an attorney not do?
- Attorneys are bound by the Mental Capacity Act 2005. They must act in the donor's best interests, help the donor make their own decisions wherever that is possible, and keep the donor's money entirely separate from their own. They cannot make a will for the donor, cannot change the donor's existing will, and cannot pass their role to somebody else. Gifts are tightly limited to customary occasions such as birthdays and to amounts reasonable against the size of the estate - anything larger needs Court of Protection approval. A health and welfare attorney cannot consent to or refuse life-sustaining treatment unless the donor specifically granted that power on the form. The Office of the Public Guardian supervises attorneys and can investigate concerns; in serious cases the Court of Protection can remove an attorney altogether.
- Do I need a solicitor to make a lasting power of attorney?
- No. The forms and the online service on GOV.UK are written for people to complete themselves, and most straightforward LPAs are made that way. A solicitor typically charges £300 to £650 per LPA on top of the £92 registration fee. That is worth paying when the situation is genuinely complicated: a business to run, a blended family, an estate with trusts, an attorney living overseas, an existing family dispute, or a donor whose capacity might later be questioned - in which case the professional's involvement is itself useful evidence. Whichever route you take, the safeguards are the same: a certificate provider must confirm you understand the document and are not under pressure, and the Office of the Public Guardian checks the form before registering it.
For the retirement-planning view of the same document - how an LPA fits alongside care funding, housing decisions and supporting an ageing parent - see our companion guide to power of attorney and later-life planning. The wider probate, wills and power of attorney hub covers what happens after death.
This guide explains how lasting powers of attorney work in England and Wales and was checked against GOV.UK and the Office of the Public Guardian on 23 July 2026. Fees, timescales and forms change - confirm the current position on gov.uk/power-of-attorney before you apply.
Scotland operates a separate system of continuing and welfare powers of attorney registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (Scotland), and Northern Ireland still uses enduring powers of attorney. Nothing here is legal advice or a recommendation about your own circumstances, and RetirementExpert is not a firm of solicitors. Where capacity is in doubt, where an estate is substantial, or where there is any disagreement in the family, take advice from a solicitor. See our disclaimer for more.
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- Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) — both types covered
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