Power of Attorney Kit Overview!

What is a Power of Attorney?

A power of attorney is a legal document that allows you to appoint another person (usually a trusted friend, family member, colleague or adviser) to make medical, financial, legal and other business decisions on your behalf.

Under a power of attorney, you can give your agent either general authority or limited authority. Where you give your agent general authority, he or she will be authorised to act as your legal representative in relation to the whole cross-section of your legal and financial affairs until such time as that authorisation is terminated. In other words, your agent will have full legal authority to make decisions and take actions on your behalf, as if you were taking them yourself. This could, for example, include signing letters, negotiating agreements, signing mortgage documentation, etc!

With limited authority, your agent is only given authority to deal with the specific matters specified by you in your power of attorney document. These matters could relate to the purchase or sale of property, the operation of a business, dealing with banking transactions and similar matters, taking out insurance and virtually any other matter you choose. Your agent will not be entitled to act on your behalf in relation to any matter that is not expressly set out in your power of attorney.

Powers of attorney can also be classified as either 'ordinary' or enduring. Ordinary powers of attorney, which automatically come to an end if you become mentally incapacitated or die, can be useful where you wish to simply authorise an agent to tend to some financial or commercial arrangements when you are unable to do so yourself.

Enduring powers of attorney, on the other hand, do not come to an end when you become incapacitated and, in most cases, actually only become effective when you become incapacitated). For this reason, enduring powers of attorney should form an integral part of your overall estate plan. The reason for this is that they allow you to appoint someone to manage your legal and financial affairs if you become incapacitated and unable to do so yourself. This can be very important where you have assets that need to be actively managed to preserve their value or where some of your assets need to be sold to pay for medical bills or to keep up mortgage repayments etc. It could be equally important to sell assets if there was a collapse in share or property prices (such as we’ve seen over recent years) in order to prevent further loss on an investment, for example.

It is also possible to make an enduring power of attorney for personal care under which you can appoint someone you trust to make medical decisions on your behalf if you are unconscious or otherwise unable to make these decisions yourself. In the absence of choosing somebody yourself, medical practitioners will usually allow a family member to make medical decisions for you. Of course, this may not be someone you would have approved of given the choice.

Enduring powers of attorney for personal care not only ensure that you have someone you know and trust making these decisions for you but also allow you direct what treatments and procedures you are willing or unwilling to accept. Your agent will be charged with ensuring that your wishes are carried out in such circumstances.

If you fail to make a valid enduring power of attorney for property and finance your family (even your spouse) may be legally helpless to manage your property and your assets. Similarly, by failing to make an enduring power of attorney for personal care, you could end up receiving medical treatments that you would not have wished to receive.

The only way to protect yourself from these dangers is to have an enduring power of attorney which authorises someone you trust to make these important decisions for you and which expressly sets out your wishes and requirements in relation to the making of legal, financial and personal care decisions on your behalf.

What’s Included in this Kit

This complete Power of Attorney Kit provides you with step-by-step instructions, detailed information and all the forms necessary to ensure that your legal, financial and medical affairs can be managed during any period in which you are unable or unwilling to do so yourself. It will take you step-by-step through the process of creating your own powers of attorney and appointing an agent to manage your affairs.

This kit allows you to create the following powers of attorney:

1. General power of attorney for property and finance
2. Limited power of attorney for property and finance
3. Lasting power of attorney for property and finance
4. Lasting power of attorney for healthcare & living will

This is a must have kit for anyone serious on having a complete estate plan.

** While this kit contains information and the forms necessary to create an enduring power of attorney, you should note that you will need to visit both a doctor and a solicitor before you can finalise these documents. However, you should remember that solicitors will charge you far less for reviewing a document than preparing it; and as the documents in this kit come in a form prescribed by law, the solicitor’s work (and his or her fees) should be minimal.