Apply for power of attorney? Avoid these 12 mistakes that could get you rejected

The number of people setting up a legal failsafe in case they get sick is soaring, but almost 51,000 applications were rejected last year.

Approximately 30,200 financial and 20,700 health and welfare enduring powers of attorney were rejected due to errors such as misspelled names, missing or illegible information and conflicting instructions.

Applications for LPAs, which appoint a trusted family member or friend to take over your finances or make medical decisions if necessary, rose by 28 percent to 1.37 million.

That’s 60 percent more than five years ago, according to figures from the Office of the Public Guardian, which runs the system.

The rejection rate in the 2023-2024 period was 3.7 percent, notes investment firm Hargreaves Lansdown, which obtained the figures through a freedom of information request.

> Find common mistakes to avoid and a checklist for submitting applications below

Sarah Coles, head of personal finance at Hargreaves, said: ‘There is a significant backlog of applications, and in 2023/24 it took an average of 76 working days to process each application.

‘If you make a mistake, it prolongs the pain because the application is rejected. It means families need to make sure they don’t follow the rules.”

She adds that there are changes in the pipeline that should help streamline the process, allowing you to do more online, but no date has been set for that yet.

“It will include more robust identity checks and will change the system so that instead of the donor (the person appointing the lawyer) or the lawyer being able to register the LPA, only the donor can,” she says. .

“You need to make sure you know what this means for you when the rules come in.”

Many people use lawyers to prepare their LPAs to avoid mistakes. Costs vary hugely, but you can expect to pay £300-400 for help with one LPA, with offers available if you want to get both a financial and a health and wellbeing LPA in one go or if a couple design together.

However, the bill may be higher if you have complicated cases. You will also need to pay £82 per LPA to register them with the OPG.

Without an LPA, families can be left out of a sick relative’s finances and forced to apply for a surrogate. This involves a complicated legal procedure and the costs can amount to many thousands of euros.

People who have an old Lasting Power of Attorney for Financial Affairs drawn up before 2007 are being warned to consider switching to an LPA.

An EPA can only be registered in a lengthy process after you become ill, but an LPA can be registered at the time you set it up and then take effect immediately if it is needed later.

Holly Chantler, director of The Association of Lifetime Lawyers, says 50,000 LPA rejections over a year equates to around 137 per day.

‘The processing time for applications can take up to 16 weeks, even if everything has been completed correctly.’ she says.

‘Any mistake can cause significant delays, making it crucial to get it right the first time. LPAs cannot be used until they have been registered and if the person who made the LPA no longer has the capacity to make a new LPA this can cause significant problems.

Chantler says a common mistake is using the wrong form. Make sure you use the LP1F for property and financial matters and the LP1H for health decisions, check that they are the latest versions and do not mix pages between them.

“Another common problem is the use of pencil or correction fluid, which is not allowed,” she adds. ‘Only blue or black ink should be used and any errors should be neatly crossed out, corrected next to the error and initialed by the person making the change.’

She says you should always use full names, as using initials or omitting details is a common reason for refusal.

Chantler explains the order in which people need to register, which is crucial: first the donor, the witnesses, the certificate provider, the lawyers – who also need to have their signatures checked – and then the person re-registering the LPA.

“You have to make sure your witnesses are eligible. For example, a lawyer cannot witness the signature of the donor (the person making the LPA) due to a conflict of interest.”

Twelve common power of attorney mistakes to avoid

Sarah Coles from Hargreaves Lansdown has put together this overview of typical mistakes people make when applying for LPAs.

1. Misspelling names

ID checks will fail if the name is misspelled. They can also fail if you confused the order of the first and middle names.

2. Register in wrong order

There are as many as five sets of signatures you will need for the application, and they must be placed in the correct order. If the dates on the signatures show that they were signed out of order, they will be rejected.

3. Missing information

You will need the names, addresses and dates of birth of the donor and attorneys – in full. You must also complete each section.

Sometimes people don’t fully understand the part about how they want lawyers to act, so they leave it blank. This will result in the application being rejected.

4. Illegible information

If they can’t read your handwriting or understand your corrections, they will reject it.

5. Bad corrections

If you make a mistake on the form, you must cross out the error, correct it, and then initial it. It must be initialed by the person who made the mistake. If you use correction fluid, or do not initiate the correction (or if the wrong person does), it will be rejected.

6. Bad notifications

Part of the registration process involves notifying specific people you said you would tell. There is a specific form that you need to send to each of them.

If you are doing both a health and welfare LPA and a financial LPA, and you are notifying the same people, you will need to send them two forms each (one for each LPA) as they will be treated as separate applications.

7. Confusing instructions and preferences

The instructions specify the things you want your lawyers to do and the preferences are the things you would like them to do, so the language matters.

If you include an instruction to use money for the benefit of someone other than yourself (such as giving gifts), this is likely to fail because it could conflict with the duty to act in your best interests.

It means it’s best to include this as a preference: something you’d like them to do.

8. Giving conflicting instructions

Make sure instructions don’t conflict with anything else in the document.

For example, if you have appointed lawyers ‘jointly and severally’, this means that they can make decisions independently or together. So you cannot include an instruction that says that one lawyer must do what the other says or that in cases of disagreement you want to go along with the majority.

9. Telling lawyers that they must act in someone else’s best interest

They only act for you and therefore cannot put your partner or children first.

10. Trying to dictatee how substitute attorneys act

The form allows replacement lawyers to be appointed if something happens to the original lawyers.

However, you cannot provide instructions when this happens. So, for example, you cannot tell them to intervene when your lawyers are on holiday. You also cannot give power of attorney to appoint a replacement.

11. Trying to give lawyers the power to change your will

This is not allowed and the request will fail.

12. Adding the wrong type of instructions

If you add financial instructions to a health and welfare LPA, it will fail, and vice versa. If you want them to cover both, you need both types of LPA.