A Lasting Power of Attorney grants someone the legal right to make medical or financial decisions on someone else’s behalf if they lose the capacity to make these themselves. There are health and welfare LPAs and financial LPAs and both have the same ways they can be ended.
Do LPAs expire?
Once you have completed an application for an LPA online or on paper, with or without the help of companies such as //powerofattorneyonline.co.uk/, they will not expire unless particular circumstances change. As long as they have been registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, both types of LPA are valid until they are ended voluntarily or a donor dies. They may also end if an attorney can no longer act.
Why might an attorney step down?
An attorney may step down for a range of reasons, such as if the LPA is revoked by the donor, they lose mental capacity, due to the end of a marriage or civil partnership if an exception isn’t specified, or if one of a pair of joint attorneys steps down and the document doesn’t permit one attorney to act alone. An attorney for a Property & Financial Affairs LPA will also become ineligible if they have a debt relief order or become bankrupt.
If any of the previous reasons apply, the donor can amend their LPAs through the Office of the Public Guardian. Amended documents can sometimes become invalid, however, and so it is usually recommended that a new document is written up.
