News | April 29, 2019

Practitioners should consider additional protective measures for Lasting Powers of Attorney in case problems arise – eprivateclient 04/04/2019

Ann Stanyer, writes an article for eprivateclient.

The Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) reports each year with an update on their work in registering powers of attorney and in safeguarding those who have lost their mental capacity.

The OPG has been running for ten years and they report that their register now contains over 3 million powers of attorney and nearly 60,000 deputyship orders.

Safeguarding referrals are mentioned in the report and from these we can see that there has been a significant rise in referrals which were accepted by the OPG’s investigations unit for investigation. These increased by 49.9 percent as compared with 2016/17 and are a sign that attorneys are (intentionally or not) abusing their position under the LPA. Practitioners should consider additional protective measures for the LPA to guard against the risk of attorneys abusing their position of power, just in case problems arise. Our role as advisors is to protect our elderly vulnerable clients and to ensure that by including additional protective measures in their LPAs we have safeguarded our clients and their estates.

The article was originally published by eprivateclient on 4 April 2019, please click here to read the full article. (£)