When Is the Right Time to Make an LPA?

Before we get into timing, let's nail down what this thing actually is. A Lasting Power of Attorney lets you pick somebody to make decisions for you when you can't make them yourself, and that person is your "attorney," not the American courtroom kind but simply someone with legal permission to act on your behalf. You, the one setting it up, are the "donor."

There are two versions that work quite differently from each other. The Property and Financial Affairs LPA covers your money, including bank accounts, pensions, property, bills, and savings. The Health and Welfare LPA handles the personal side, covering medical treatment, where you live, and daily care decisions, and you also choose whether your attorney gets the authority to consent to or refuse life-sustaining treatment. Heavy stuff, but yours to control.

Both types sit under the Mental Capacity Act 2005 and need registering with the Office of the Public Guardian before anyone can use them, at a cost of £92 per LPA.

And here's the bit I keep coming back to. You can only create an LPA while you still have mental capacity, and once that's gone the option vanishes with no backdating, no workarounds, and no alternatives.

This is the part that should genuinely worry you, not in a scaremongering way but in a "this is just how the law works and you need to hear it" way.

Mental capacity comes down to four things happening at once: you can understand the information relevant to a decision, you can hold it in your head long enough to think it through, you can weigh up the options, and you can communicate what you've decided. If all four are present when you sign then you've got capacity, but any one of them missing means the door is shut.

Nobody sends you a letter about it beforehand, because strokes happen overnight and car crashes take seconds. Dementia, though, is the one that really catches families off guard because it moves slowly, and by the time everyone agrees something is properly wrong the person might already be past the threshold for signing legal documents.

The Alzheimer's Society puts the number of people living with dementia in the UK at roughly 982,000, climbing every year. But dementia isn't the only thing that takes capacity away, because brain injuries, strokes, serious mental illness, infections that cause confusion, and certain medications can all do it, sometimes with absolutely no warning.

My honest opinion? Waiting for a reason to act is just gambling, because you're betting that you'll get advance notice before something happens to your brain, and you won't. The only safe move is getting your LPA sorted while you're well, whether that means today or this week, rather than after the next birthday or the next house move or whenever feels like the "right time."

There's no magic age, and I wish there were because then people would just do it at that age and we could all move on. But certain moments in life should be the nudge you need, and if several of these have already passed you by then that tells you something.

Turning 18

You can legally create an LPA at 18, and most teenagers won't have this on their radar, which is fair enough. But if you're heading to university, starting work, or about to travel, it's worth knowing about because a registered LPA means a parent or someone you trust can step in immediately if something happens while you're abroad and you can't manage your own affairs, with no delays and no court applications.

I realise telling an 18-year-old to sort out a legal document sounds absurd, but the ones who do it and never need it have lost nothing, while the ones who don't do it and then something happens have lost everything.

Getting married or entering a civil partnership

This is where one of the biggest misconceptions lives, because people assume that if one partner loses capacity the other just takes over, and they really can't. A marriage certificate is not a power of attorney, and banks will lock a spouse out of sole accounts without hesitation. Mortgage lenders won't speak to someone who isn't on the deed unless they hold an LPA, and your wedding ring means nothing to Barclays. Sorry.

Having children

Kids raise the stakes in a way that's hard to overstate. If you're incapacitated and nobody has legal authority over your finances, bills pile up and the mortgage falls behind while your family's money situation deteriorates as everyone scrambles to get a court order that should never have been needed in the first place.

Buying property

Your home is probably the most valuable thing you own, and without an LPA nobody can sell it, remortgage it, or look after it if you lose capacity. It just sits there frozen, costing money every month while lawyers argue about jurisdiction.

Retirement

Finances shift as pensions, savings, and investments all need managing, and this is precisely when the risk of cognitive decline starts climbing. A lot of people only think about LPAs for the first time around retirement, and that's fine because earlier would have been better but now still works while tomorrow might not.

Receiving a diagnosis

If a doctor tells you that you have early-stage dementia, Parkinson's, MS, a brain tumour, or anything that could affect your thinking further down the road, treat it as urgent in a today sense rather than a next month sense. A diagnosis does not mean you've lost capacity right now, and plenty of people in the early stages can absolutely create an LPA. But the window could be narrowing, and procrastinating here is genuinely reckless.

Ask people why they haven't sorted an LPA and the number one answer, every single time, is "I'm too young for that." The flaw in that thinking is so obvious it's almost painful to spell out, because it assumes losing mental capacity only happens to older people.

It doesn't, and you know it doesn't.

Every year, thousands of working-age adults across the UK suffer strokes, traumatic brain injuries, and sudden medical crises that leave them unable to manage their own lives. Road accidents, falls at work, sporting injuries, infections that cause the brain to swell, and heart attacks that cut off oxygen long enough to cause lasting damage can all strike without warning, and none of these check your date of birth first.

A 28-year-old cyclist hit by a van ends up in the same legal dead end as a 78-year-old with worsening dementia, assuming neither has an LPA. Nobody can act for them while bills pile up and the bank says no, and the family goes through the Court of Protection, which is expensive, slow, and completely avoidable.

And this is what gets me. Making an LPA in your twenties or thirties isn't morbid, even though people say it is because they're uncomfortable thinking about it. It's the same logic as insuring your car on the day you buy it, because you're not planning to crash but you just don't fancy betting everything on nothing going wrong, ever.

This is the part I think everyone should read twice, because most people have no idea how bad it gets.

If you lose mental capacity without a registered LPA, your family has one option: the Court of Protection, a specialist court that handles decisions for people who can no longer make those decisions themselves. Your family applies for a "deputyship order," which sounds straightforward enough but is not.

The application fee is £371 with an assessment fee of £490 on top, and most families hire a solicitor to wade through the paperwork, adding somewhere between 2,000 and £5,000. The whole process takes months, longer if something gets contested, and longer still if the case is complicated. Contested happens more than you'd think, because stress makes people fight about things they'd normally agree on.

Once a deputy is finally appointed, the OPG supervises them on an ongoing basis with annual fees between 35 and £320 depending on the estate size, every single year for as long as the deputyship lasts.

And while the application crawls through the system nobody has legal authority over your money, so bills go unpaid, direct debits bounce, and the mortgage company sends letters. If doctors need decisions about your care they rely on their own clinical judgement because your family has no formal standing to say anything.

Perhaps the hardest bit is that you don't get to choose who the court appoints. It might be your spouse, your daughter, or a professional deputy you've never met if the court decides that's the safer option, meaning someone you've never had a conversation with could be making choices about your life.

Now compare that to making an LPA today, which costs £92 per document and involves a straightforward process where your chosen person steps in the moment they're needed with no waiting, no courtroom, and no stranger deciding your future.

I genuinely do not understand why anyone would choose the first option when the second one exists.

These aren't unusual stories, because they play out in ordinary families every week and will keep playing out until people stop putting this off.

The early retirement

David and Susan are both 62 and retired last year. David has always run everything, including pensions, investments, bills, the lot, and Susan never had to get involved, which seemed fine at the time. Then David has a stroke and pulls through, but he can't process complex information any more. Susan discovers she can't touch his pension, can't manage his ISA, and can't even speak to his bank about his current account. Without an LPA, she has to go through the Court of Protection before she's allowed to pay the gas bill from his money. The gas bill, and that alone should tell you everything you need to know.

The sudden accident

James is 34 and works in construction. He falls from scaffolding and suffers a serious brain injury, and his partner isn't married to him, which means she has absolutely no legal standing whatsoever. She can't access his bank account, can't deal with his employer, and has no say in his medical care. The Court of Protection process drags on for five months while mortgage payments are missed and his credit record takes a hit he did nothing to deserve. If they'd spent twenty minutes on an LPA before any of this happened, none of it would have been necessary.

The slow decline

Margaret is 74 and has started showing signs of memory loss. Her family notices but assumes there's plenty of time, and "plenty of time" is the most dangerous phrase in estate planning. By the time they actually raise the subject of an LPA with her, Margaret can no longer understand what the document means. The window has closed, and her son applies for deputyship instead, which takes seven months and costs over £3,000, all because "plenty of time" turned out to be no time at all.

The family that got it right

Rachel and Tom are both in their forties and set up LPAs for each other when they bought their first house. Neither has needed them since, and hopefully neither ever will, but the documents sit registered and ready. If either of them loses capacity the other acts straight away, and the total cost was £184 for both LPAs. The total stress if the worst happens would be a fraction of what those other families went through, and that's the difference between planning and hoping.

You don't have to make both, but I think most people should, and here's why.

Property and Financial Affairs LPA

This gives your attorney authority over your money and assets, covering bank accounts, savings, pensions, investments, property, tax, and bills. Once registered, it can work in two ways: you can let your attorney use it straight away with your consent while you still have capacity, or you can restrict it so it only activates after you've lost capacity.

The immediate option is more practical than people expect, because if you're recovering from surgery, travelling for a few months, or getting older and wanting a trusted person to help with the admin, your attorney steps in without anyone having to wait for a crisis. I'd argue this alone makes the financial LPA worth having well before you think you'll need it.

Health and Welfare LPA

This covers medical treatment, care arrangements, daily routine, and where you live. Unlike the financial version, it can only be used after you've lost capacity for the specific decision in question, so as long as you can decide for yourself your attorney has no power here.

You also choose whether your attorney can make decisions about life-sustaining treatment, and that is entirely your call. You can grant it, withhold it, or set conditions around it, with no default answer and no pressure from anyone.

Both types cost £92 each to register with the OPG, making it £184 if you do both, and fee exemptions exist if you receive certain means-tested benefits while a 50 per cent reduction applies if your gross annual income falls below £12,000.

And look, £184 for both compared to a deputyship application that starts at £861 before the solicitor even picks up a pen. The maths here is not complicated.

An LPA means nothing until the Office of the Public Guardian has registered it, and that is worth repeating because an unregistered LPA is just a piece of paper.

The process involves completing the document, getting it signed in the right order with you first, then your certificate provider, then your attorneys, and sending it off with the 82-pound fee.

The certificate provider is someone independent who confirms you understand the LPA and nobody's pressuring you into it, either someone who has known you personally for at least two years or a professional such as a GP, solicitor, or social worker.

Registration usually takes around two to three months, though it varies, and once done the OPG sends back a stamped copy that your attorneys show to banks, care homes, and whoever else needs convincing.

Here's where people trip up, and it happens all the time. They fill in the LPA but don't register it, figuring they'll get round to it when they need it. The trouble is that "when they need it" sometimes arrives after capacity has already gone, leaving a completed document nobody can activate and a family stuck in exactly the same Court of Protection queue as if the LPA never existed.

Register immediately, because it costs the same amount either way. Sitting on an unregistered LPA is like buying a smoke alarm and leaving it in the packaging, since the point is being ready before the fire rather than during it.

Our online LPA service takes you through the whole thing one step at a time by asking straightforward questions about your situation, who you want as your attorneys, and what your preferences are, before producing the completed LPA documents ready for signing and registration with the OPG.

Everything is in plain English with no legal background needed, and the guided format covers things people forget about on their own, such as naming replacement attorneys in case your first choice can't act and recording restrictions you want your attorneys to follow.

Work through it at whatever pace suits you, saving your progress and coming back whenever you like, with both LPA types available on their own or as a combined package.

The right time to make an LPA is before you need one, and for most people reading this that means today, while for some it possibly meant five years ago. What counts now is doing it while the option is still open.

If you've been putting it off because it feels like a job for "later," I want you to sit with this for a second. Later is the one thing nobody can guarantee, and the capacity window doesn't send a reminder before it closes but simply closes. Then you're the one whose family is scrambling through the Court of Protection wondering why nobody did this sooner.

Making an LPA is not a sign that something is wrong with you but rather a practical step that puts clear authority in the hands of people you trust and keeps your family out of that courtroom. At £92 per document, it is genuinely one of the cheapest and most worthwhile things you can do for the people around you.

Stop putting it off, seriously, because the procrastination is the risk.

Keystone Estate Planning is an estate planning service, not a law firm. The information in this article is for general guidance only and does not constitute legal advice. If your circumstances are complex or you are unsure about any aspect of creating an LPA, we recommend seeking independent legal advice from a qualified solicitor.

The OPG registration fee of £92 per LPA and other costs mentioned in this article are correct at the time of publication. Fees may change, so check the GOV.UK website for the most up-to-date figures.