How do you appoint someone to manage your finances if you lose capacity?
A lasting power of attorney lets someone you choose act for you if you cannot act for yourself. There are two types, both have to be registered, and both can only be made while you still have capacity — which is why this is the one piece of planning that cannot be left until it is needed.
- Two types: property and financial affairs, and health and welfare; they are separate documents.
- The timing: they can only be made while you have mental capacity to make them.
- Registration: an LPA must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian before it can be used.
- The alternative: a deputyship application to the Court of Protection, which is slower and more expensive.
01 The two documents
A property and financial affairs LPA covers bank accounts, investments, pensions, bills and property. It can be used with your permission while you still have capacity, as well as after you lose it, which makes it useful in circumstances short of incapacity — a long hospital stay, or time abroad.
A health and welfare LPA covers medical treatment, care arrangements and where you live, and it can only be used once you lack capacity to make those decisions yourself. It includes a specific decision about life-sustaining treatment that has to be made when the document is drawn.
They are separate documents with separate fees, and appointing the same people to both is common but not required. Many households complete the financial one and not the welfare one, and the welfare one is the harder gap to fill afterwards.
Source: Lasting power of attorney
02 Registration and the capacity requirement
An LPA has to be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian before it can be used, and registration takes weeks. A document signed and left unregistered in a drawer is not available in the emergency it was made for.
It can only be made while you have the mental capacity to make it. That is the whole reason for the urgency: the moment capacity is genuinely in doubt, the option is gone and the family is left with a Court of Protection deputyship application instead.
Deputyship costs considerably more, takes months rather than weeks, requires ongoing supervision and annual reporting, and gives the family no say in who is appointed. Every part of that is worse than the alternative that costs a registration fee.
Shows: the registration cost of putting both LPAs in place against the cost of a deputyship application instead. Ignores: solicitor fees where used, exemptions and remissions, and ongoing supervision fees.
On the defaults above, the worked example shows £164. Against roughly £1,200 for a deputyship application, plus months of delay, annual reporting and no say in who is appointed.
Source: Lasting power of attorney
03 What to think about when making one
Who to appoint matters more than the wording. Attorneys can be appointed jointly, so all must agree, or jointly and severally, so any can act — the second is far more practical and the first is a common and expensive mistake in a document nobody re-reads.
Appointing a replacement attorney costs nothing and covers the case where your first choice dies or becomes unable to act. Without one, the LPA can fail at exactly the point it is needed.
And tell people it exists. An LPA nobody knows about is as useful as a will nobody can find, which is why it belongs in the same place — alongside the document list a survivor will need.
Source: Make a will
This is the document everything else depends on and the one people postpone, because making it feels like an admission. Without it, a family facing a stroke or a dementia diagnosis has to apply to the Court of Protection — months, considerably more money, ongoing supervision, and no say in who is appointed. With it, someone you chose can act within weeks. Two practical points: register it now rather than holding it in a drawer, because registration takes weeks you may not have, and appoint attorneys jointly and severally so one of them can act alone.
FAQ
When can an LPA be made?
Only while you have the mental capacity to make it. Once capacity is genuinely in doubt the option is gone, and the family has to apply to the Court of Protection for a deputyship instead.
Do I need to register it straight away?
Yes. An LPA cannot be used until it is registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, and registration takes weeks. A signed but unregistered document is not available in the emergency it was made for.
Should attorneys act jointly or severally?
Jointly and severally is usually more practical, because any one of them can act alone. Appointing them jointly means every decision needs all of them, which becomes difficult if one is unavailable or dies.
Sources
Regulator references
- Lasting power of attorney · GOV.UK · 2025The two types of LPA and what each one lets an attorney do.Last verified: 2026-09-07
- Make a will · GOV.UK · 2025The formal requirements a will has to meet to be valid.Last verified: 2026-09-07
Calculator unit tests · the assertions this page's worked example is checked against, and their last result
Changelog
- 2026-09-07 — initial publish (new format)
Run this rule against your situation
See what this rule does to your own projection — month by month, to age 90.
Join the Waitlist
Jordan Reeves
Founder of Talk Through Wealth. A software engineer for over a decade before turning to retirement planning, Jordan built the projection engine after watching family members get fragmented, country-by-country advice that never reconciled. He writes about retirement the way the engine computes it: month-by-month, lifetime-long, and skeptical of any rule of thumb that hasn't been run through the math.