What do you know about Power of Attorney?
Have you made one?
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What do you know about Power of Attorney?
Until fairly recently, I thought about Power of Attorney as something that you put in place when a close relative is getting old and you think at some point in the future you may need to manage their financial affairs.
I remember my sister and I worrying about asking our dad to make one because we felt like we’d be saying, hey, you know how you’re approaching death…? (Also: hey, we’d like access to your cash, what do you think?)
But then recently a friend mentioned that everyone should have a Power of Attorney in place because - and, honestly, I still hate to think about this - any of us could find ourselves in the position of needing someone to act on our behalf at any time, at any age.
Katy Wheatley delved into this at the same time as making a will, which she wrote about here last week. So I asked her to write about this too.
Over to Katy…
Last year, after trying and failing multiple times, I finally rounded up my parents - which for two quite slow people was surprisingly hard - and marched them off to the solicitor’s office to update their wills and create power of attorneys. (I have capitalised and uncapitalised this phrase. I have thought about whether they are one or many. I don’t know).1
Most people know about wills, even if they haven’t made one yet. A power of attorney is a different beast altogether, but for my money, they are far more important things to have. A will, after all, is something that impacts you far less in the long run, because by the time the shouting starts, you’re not going to be around to witness it. A will is a nice thing to do for everyone else. A power of attorney is a vital thing to do for yourself.
In the UK they are sometimes referred to as lasting power of attorneys or LPAs. I keep writing they because there are two types of LPA, and it is important that you have both.