The Top Three Decisions That Can’t Be Made Under a Lasting Power of Attorney

24th November 2025

A Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) gives someone you trust the legal authority to make decisions on your behalf if you can’t make them yourself. It’s powerful, protective and one of the most important documents you’ll ever put in place.

But LPAs have limits, and those limits are there for good reasons. Attorneys can step in to help manage finances, make welfare choices, or handle everyday decisions, but there are some lines they can’t cross, no matter what.

Here are the top three decisions an attorney is legally not allowed to make under any LPA.

1. Attorneys Cannot Make or Change a Will

An attorney can manage your money… but they cannot decide what happens to it when you die.

Only you can make or update your own will, provided you have mental capacity. Attorneys also cannot:

• Rewrite an existing will
• Add or remove beneficiaries
• Change executors
• Redirect your estate

This protects the donor from financial abuse and ensures their estate is always handled according to their wishes, not someone else’s.

If your will needs updating, it has to be done before capacity is lost. An attorney can’t do it for you later and the courts will never allow it.

2. Attorneys Cannot Make Decisions After the Donor’s Death

An attorney’s legal power ends the moment the donor dies.

From that point, only the executor named in the will or the administrator of the estate has the authority to act. That means attorneys cannot:

• Pay debts on behalf of the estate
• Access accounts
• Sell property
• Arrange the funeral (unless they’re also next of kin or executor)
• Make financial or welfare decisions of any kind

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about LPAs. They’re powerful, but only while the donor is still alive.

3. Attorneys Cannot Make Certain Medical Decisions (Like Refusing Life-Sustaining Treatment) Without Explicit Permission

A Health & Welfare LPA can cover major medical decisions, but there’s a very important condition:

Attorneys can only make decisions about life-sustaining treatment if the donor has specifically authorised it in Section 5 of the LPA.

Without that explicit instruction, the final say rests with doctors and medical professionals.

Attorneys also cannot:

• Demand specific medical treatments
• Overrule clinical decisions
• Decide to place the donor in certain care settings for convenience rather than necessity
• Force a hospital or GP to act against medical guidance

This safeguard ensures decisions about life, health, and dignity are made with the highest level of legal and clinical oversight.

A Lasting Power of Attorney gives attorneys a huge amount of responsibility, but not unlimited power. Rules around wills, end-of-life choices and post-death decisions are there to protect the donor’s rights, dignity and independence.

Understanding these boundaries while setting up your LPA using a service like Power of Attorney Online helps donors feel safe and helps attorneys stay confident that they’re acting lawfully, ethically and always in the donor’s best interests.