MIL has recently been formally diagnosed with vascular dementia - although the signs have been there for a couple of years. Advice from the memory clinic says that it would still be possible to get POA. A solicitor friend says that since one of her children can sign on Mum's current account that all that really needs to be done is to get Mum to put one or more of her children as signatories on her building society account.
There are two types of Power of Attorney; one deals with Health and Welfare, the other with Financial. I'll look at Financial first. They are both referred to as Lasting Powers of Attorney.
An LPA is granted by a donor - in this case your mum. The LPA nominates one or more persons called attorneys. An attorney is able to do most of what the donor could do in financial terms, in other words, pay bills, access bank and savings accounts and so on. The donor may, if they wish, put restrictions of the attorney's authority in the LPA, otherwise the attorney can do virtually everything the donor themselves could do. This includes receiving the state benefits of the donor and using the money to pay bills, for example, or even applying for new benefits. One of the few limits is that attorneys generally require a specific sanction from the Office of the Public Guardian for very large transactions or the sale of a property.
As you can see, being an attorney is powerful and flexible. Being a signatory on your mum's building society account is extremely limited - it just gives you a limited access to one specific account and technically speaking does not give you the right to control the account - if you were an attorney you could.
Having a Power of Attorney is usually seen as highly desirable - a sort of insurance policy that you hope you will not need but will be glad of if the need arises. It really does make things much easier, espescially if your mum had to go into residential care and you (or someone else) had to manage all of her affairs. Most official forms, for example, have a section marked "Tick here if you are filling in this form on someone else's behalf and you have power of attorney" - this would be accepted without question.
Ultimately, if you find you need the powers of an attorney but there is no LPA, then you would have to apply to the Court of Protection to be made a Deputy. This process is lengthy, complicated and expensive and Deputies do not have the full powers of an attorney.
The other LPA is Health and Welfare. It lets the attorney make some decisions, for example, a Do Not Resuscitate instruction. The attorney's decision is legally enforcible and doctors must comply with it. Otherwise, relatives can only issue opinions, and doctors are under no obligation to comply with those.
I don;t think it is possible to apply for Deputyship powers that are the equivalent of a Health and Welfare attorney. Deputyship is just for financial stuff.
Mum signed over her house to her three children many years ago.
Having read about difficulties of not having POA on this site I wondered if anyone had any thoughts about this. What if Mum needs medical assistance at a future date and refuses - if there is no POA, does that mean going for a section?
Many thanks in advance for your help
A health and welfare can make some decsions. However, the only way to force someoneone to enter hospital or to take medications involuntarily is a section under the Mental Health Act.
I was also concerned by the ide aof your mum "signing oiver her house". If you mean she simply gave it away, this may not protect it in the way you think and it also has inheritance tax implications, particularly if she remains living in it.
