Enduring Power of Attorney & Guardianship

 

An Enduring Power of Attorney, enabling a trusted person to act on your behalf if you lack capacity to act yourself, must be considered carefully.
 

An Enduring Power of Attorney enables you to appoint a trusted person or persons to handle property and financial matters on your behalf. If you are considering scenarios where a person needs someone to make care and maintenance decisions, a Guardianship application is required.
 

You can appoint one or more individuals to either role – these people are usually family members or close colleagues and friends. They often have their own independent relationships with others close to you, so potential influences and conflicts of interests must be addressed.
 

When advising clients, we cover potential scenarios in detail, to ensure instructions and limits to authority are clear and precise.
 

We build up good governance procedures to ensure that power is not abused. We set clear parameters, with a system of checks and balances. This can include specific events to trigger the activations of the EPOA or Guardianship; specific people who must be notified; limits on certain options to take, or other conditions dependent on your situation and your wishes.
 

In some cases, a committee of selected individuals may be set up to handle day-to-day management, rather than trusting one individual.