Still Relying on an EPA?

By Matt Cresswell, Founder of Power of Attorney Online and author of
Everything you ever wanted to know about LPAs (but were afraid to ask)

21st August 2026

If you are still relying on an old Enduring Power of Attorney, Still Relying on an EPA? is worth asking before you assume your arrangements are as comprehensive as they need to be. An EPA made and properly signed before 1 October 2007 can still be valid in England and Wales, so having an old document does not automatically mean you need to replace it. But EPAs were replaced by Lasting Powers of Attorney in October 2007, and there are some important differences. An EPA only covers property, money and financial affairs. It does not provide the health and welfare decision-making powers available through a Health and Welfare LPA. An EPA also has a different registration process, which becomes particularly important when the donor starts to lose mental capacity. If you still have capacity, you can choose to cancel an old EPA and make a new Property and Financial Affairs LPA, and you can also make a Health and Welfare LPA.

What an EPA still does today

Enduring Powers of Attorney have not simply expired.

They were replaced by LPAs from 1 October 2007, but existing EPAs continue to have effect. The government confirms that an EPA made and signed before that date can still be used.

That is worth stressing because there is a common misconception that every EPA made before 2007 is now invalid. It isn’t.

If the document was made correctly, it can still provide authority over the donor’s property and financial affairs. That can include things such as bank accounts, bills, property, investments, pensions and benefits, depending on the terms of the particular EPA.

If the donor still has mental capacity, an EPA can be used with their permission. If the donor loses mental capacity, the attorney must register the EPA with the Office of the Public Guardian before they can continue using it in that situation.

So an old EPA isn’t necessarily a problem. The question is whether it provides the protection and flexibility the donor now needs.

The three things an EPA cannot do

The biggest limitation is also the simplest. An EPA can’t cover health and welfare decisions.

It was designed to deal with property, money and financial affairs. The modern LPA system separates these responsibilities into two different documents: a Property and Financial Affairs LPA and a Health and Welfare LPA.

That means an EPA attorney cannot use the EPA to decide where the donor should live, what care they should receive or what happens with day-to-day welfare decisions.

They can’t use it to give or refuse consent to medical treatment on the donor’s behalf. They can’t use it to make decisions about things such as diet, dress, daily routine or social care.

Those are areas covered by a Health and Welfare LPA, and a health and welfare attorney can only act once the donor lacks the mental capacity to make the relevant decision.

This distinction can become very real very quickly. Imagine an elderly parent has an old EPA appointing one of their children to deal with their finances.

The parent has a fall and is admitted to hospital. The family is now discussing rehabilitation, care arrangements and potentially moving into residential care. The child may have financial authority under the EPA. That does not mean they automatically have health and welfare authority.

The two roles are separate.

An EPA can’t be updated

Another important difference is that you can’t simply amend an existing EPA to bring it up to date. If you want different attorneys, broader planning or a different structure, the government guidance says the existing EPA needs to be cancelled and replaced with an LPA instead.

That can be particularly relevant when an EPA was created many years ago.

People’s circumstances change. The person appointed as attorney may have moved abroad, become elderly themselves, developed health problems, fallen out of contact with the donor or simply no longer be the person the donor would choose today.

An old EPA reflects the decision that was made at the time. It doesn’t automatically evolve as the family changes.

An LPA gives you the opportunity to reconsider who should have responsibility and how multiple attorneys should act.

EPA versus LPA: the practical difference

The easiest way to understand the decision is to put the documents side by side.

Feature	Existing EPA	Property & Financial Affairs LPA	Health & Welfare LPA
Can still be made today?	No	Yes	Yes
Covers money and property?	Yes	Yes	No
Covers health and welfare?	No	No	Yes
Can cover bank accounts?	Yes	Yes	No
Can cover property decisions?	Yes	Yes	No
Can cover care and living arrangements?	No	No	Yes
Can attorneys make health decisions?	No	No	Yes, if donor lacks capacity
Registration	Required when donor loses capacity	Must be registered before use	Must be registered before use
Can donor choose new attorneys?	Not by amending EPA	Yes, through a new LPA	Yes
Can replacement attorneys be included?	Depends on original EPA structure	Yes	Yes

The key thing to notice is that an LPA isn’t simply a newer version of an EPA.

It is a different legal framework. The Property and Financial Affairs LPA broadly replaces the financial role previously covered by an EPA, while the Health and Welfare LPA adds an entirely separate area of authority that EPAs never provided.

The registration difference matters

This is one of the more important practical differences.

An EPA can be used while the donor still has mental capacity, with their permission.

If the donor starts to lose mental capacity, the attorney has to register the EPA with the Office of the Public Guardian. The attorney must notify the donor, certain family members and other relevant attorneys before applying. Those people have an opportunity to object to the registration.

The current government guidance says EPA registration usually takes 8 to 10 weeks after the application has been submitted and the required notifications have been made, although objections can make the process longer.

An LPA works differently. The LPA must be registered before an attorney can use it. You do not wait until the donor loses capacity to start the registration process. The document can be registered while the donor still has full capacity and then be ready when it is needed.

That is a significant difference in practical terms. With an EPA, the trigger for registration is the donor’s loss or impending loss of capacity. With an LPA, registration is part of getting the arrangement ready in advance.

That can make a modern LPA feel much more straightforward when a family is planning ahead.

Why early registration can matter

Imagine someone has an old EPA and is still managing their own affairs. They are becoming increasingly forgetful, but nobody is quite sure whether they have lost mental capacity.

The family waits. Then there is a medical event. The attorney now needs to start using the EPA formally. The EPA needs to be registered. The family has to go through the notification process. The registration itself can take weeks.

This doesn’t mean every EPA creates a problem. But it does mean families should understand that registration is not something that can necessarily be dealt with instantly when a crisis arrives.

With an LPA, the donor can make the document and register it while they still have capacity. The government currently says an LPA takes around 8 to 10 weeks to register where there are no mistakes in the application.

The practical advantage is simple: the legal authority can be sitting there ready before anyone needs it.

The health and welfare gap is often the biggest reason to upgrade

For many people with an old EPA, this is the decisive issue.

They think, “We’ve already got power of attorney.” But what they actually have is an old financial power. That may be exactly what they need. Or it may only solve half the problem.

A Health and Welfare LPA can cover decisions about medical treatment, care, where the donor lives and aspects of their day-to-day life. Attorneys can only make those decisions when the donor lacks mental capacity to make them.

There is also a particularly important choice concerning life-sustaining treatment. A donor can choose whether their health and welfare attorneys have authority to give or refuse consent to life-sustaining treatment on their behalf. An EPA provides none of this.

So if the purpose of reviewing an old EPA is to make sure the family knows who can step in during a serious illness, the Health and Welfare LPA deserves particular attention.

Keep, supplement or replace?

There is no requirement to replace every old EPA.

The right decision depends on what the existing document covers, whether the attorneys remain appropriate and whether the donor still has capacity.

Situation	Sensible approach
EPA is valid, attorney is still appropriate and only financial authority is needed	Keep the EPA and understand the registration rules
EPA is valid but you also want someone to make health and welfare decisions	Keep or replace the financial arrangement and make a Health and Welfare LPA
EPA attorney is no longer the right person	Consider replacing the EPA with a new Property and Financial Affairs LPA
You want replacement attorneys	A new LPA gives you a clearer opportunity to set this up
You want different people for financial and welfare decisions	Consider separate LPAs
You want more control over how attorneys act	Review the LPA options and consider appropriate preferences or instructions
Donor is losing capacity but still clearly has capacity to make an LPA	Consider acting promptly, because an LPA can only be made while the donor has the necessary capacity
Donor has already lost capacity	A new LPA cannot be made; an existing EPA may need to be registered

That last two rows are particularly important. Capacity is the deadline.

The capacity deadline

You can only make an LPA if you have the necessary mental capacity to make it. That means there is a point at which the question changes.

If someone still has capacity, they can choose to replace their EPA with an LPA. If they no longer have capacity, they cannot simply sign a new LPA because the family has decided the old arrangement is inconvenient.

At that stage, an existing EPA may need to be registered, assuming it is valid.

If there is no usable EPA and the person lacks capacity, the family may have to look at deputyship through the Court of Protection instead. Government guidance specifically warns that losing capacity without an LPA can leave family members having to go to court to obtain authority.

This is why “we’ll sort it out when we need it” can be risky. The whole point of an LPA is to make the decision about who should help before the decision-making ability disappears.

How to replace an EPA without creating a gap

If you still have capacity and want to move from an EPA to an LPA, there is a sensible order to the process.

First, establish exactly what your existing EPA says. Check who the attorneys are. Check whether they are still people you trust. Check whether they are still able and willing to act. Check whether the EPA requires attorneys to act jointly or gives them some ability to act independently.

Then decide what you actually want from the new arrangement. Do you need only a Property and Financial Affairs LPA? Do you also want a Health and Welfare LPA? Do you want the same attorneys? Would different people be better for financial and welfare decisions? Would replacement attorneys be sensible?

Only then should you cancel the old EPA.

This sequencing matters. The government’s guidance confirms that an unregistered EPA can be cancelled while the donor still has capacity by making a deed of revocation. The donor must sign it with a witness and notify the attorneys and relevant financial providers.

If an EPA has already been registered, the position is more complicated. The government says cancelling a registered EPA requires an application to the Court of Protection, currently with a £432 application fee.

That makes it particularly important not to casually revoke an existing arrangement before understanding what state it is in.

What if the EPA is already registered?

An EPA doesn’t have to be replaced simply because it has been registered.

If it is valid and the attorneys remain appropriate, it can continue to provide financial authority.

In fact, if the donor has already lost capacity, replacing it with a new LPA may not be possible because the donor may no longer have the capacity required to make one. In that situation, the existing EPA can be registered and used within its scope.

This is one of the reasons the phrase “upgrade your EPA” can be misleading. Sometimes there is nothing that needs upgrading. Sometimes the appropriate answer is to use the existing EPA and, where possible, consider whether a Health and Welfare LPA can also be made.

The facts of the particular situation matter.

What we see when people revisit old power of attorney arrangements

At Power of Attorney Online, we see a recurring issue when people start looking at LPAs only after a family concern has appeared.

The document itself is often not the only problem. The family may have an old arrangement that nobody has looked at for years.

The named attorney may no longer be the person everyone would choose. The donor may have accumulated property, investments or other assets that were not part of the family’s thinking when the EPA was created. Or the family may assume the EPA covers health and welfare simply because they refer to the whole arrangement as “power of attorney”.

Our own published guidance puts the broader LPA application error rate at 85%, which is one reason we put so much emphasis on checking documents before they’re submitted. That figure is about LPA applications generally, not old EPAs specifically, but it illustrates the practical point: getting the details right matters.

An old EPA should therefore be reviewed as a real legal arrangement, not simply filed away because it has been there for years.

How much does replacing an EPA cost?

The government registration fee for a new LPA is currently £92 per LPA, so making both a Property and Financial Affairs LPA and a Health and Welfare LPA would mean £184 in OPG registration fees before any service or professional costs. Reductions or exemptions may be available for people who meet the relevant financial criteria.

For comparison, registering an existing EPA also currently costs £92.

At Power of Attorney Online, our current price is £125 for a single LPA or £250 for a pair, plus the applicable Office of the Public Guardian registration fees.

There is also a free route. The government provides its own online LPA service and paper forms, and you do not need a solicitor to make an LPA unless you have unusual or specific requirements.

That is worth saying plainly. Replacing an EPA with an LPA doesn’t inherently require paying a solicitor.

The decision is really about how much help you want with preparing the application and checking that the details have been completed correctly.

Is an LPA always better than an EPA?

Not necessarily. “Newer” does not automatically mean “better”. An old EPA can still be perfectly effective for the financial authority it provides.

If the donor is happy with their attorneys, the document is valid and financial authority is all they need, there may be little reason to replace it simply because it is old.

The strongest case for an LPA usually arises where the donor wants something the EPA cannot provide. That might be health and welfare authority. It might be different attorneys. It might be replacement attorneys. It might be a clearer modern arrangement for how multiple attorneys should act.

Or it might simply be the desire to have a registered document ready before a future crisis rather than relying on the EPA registration process once capacity starts to disappear.

What if an attorney has died or can no longer act?

This is another reason to look at an old document now.

An EPA’s structure matters enormously if there is more than one attorney.

If attorneys were required to act jointly and one of them can no longer act, the EPA may no longer work as intended. Government guidance says that where attorneys had to make all decisions together and one stops acting, the EPA ends. Where attorneys could act jointly and severally, the position can be different.

Modern LPAs allow donors to appoint replacement attorneys, giving another person the ability to step in if an original attorney dies, loses capacity, disclaims the role or becomes unable to act for another specified reason.

That can make an LPA more robust for families who are planning for the possibility that their first choice may not always be able to take on the role. It is a small detail when filling in a form. It can become a very large issue years later.

What if you only want to add a Health and Welfare LPA?

This is perhaps the simplest situation. You may not need to replace the EPA at all.

If the old EPA is still valid and the financial arrangements remain satisfactory, the donor can potentially retain it for financial matters and make a separate Health and Welfare LPA while they still have capacity.

That gives the family two documents covering two different areas. The financial attorney continues to operate under the EPA, while the health and welfare attorney acts under the new LPA if and when the donor loses capacity. The government confirms that a person with an existing EPA can make a Health and Welfare LPA.

This can be a perfectly sensible approach. It avoids replacing something that is already doing its job.

But it also means the family needs to understand that there are now two separate legal arrangements, potentially involving different people.

That’s not necessarily a disadvantage.

In fact, some people deliberately want one person to manage their finances and another to make healthcare decisions.

FAQs

Is my old EPA still valid?

An EPA made and signed before 1 October 2007 can still be valid in England and Wales, provided it was properly made and has not otherwise been revoked or ended. You cannot make a new EPA today.

Does an EPA need to be registered?

An EPA does not need to be registered while the donor still has mental capacity and is allowing the attorney to use it. If the donor loses or is losing mental capacity, the attorney must register it with the Office of the Public Guardian.

Can an EPA cover health and welfare?

No. An EPA covers property, money and financial affairs. Health and welfare decisions require a separate Health and Welfare LPA.

Can I replace an EPA with an LPA?

Yes, if you still have the mental capacity required to make the new LPA. The government says an existing EPA can be cancelled and replaced with a Property and Financial Affairs LPA.

Can I make a Health and Welfare LPA if I already have an EPA?

Yes. The government specifically confirms that you can make a Health and Welfare LPA alongside an existing EPA.

Can I change the attorneys named in an EPA?

You cannot amend an existing EPA to add or change attorneys. If you still have capacity and want different arrangements, the usual route is to cancel the EPA and make a new LPA.

What if I have already lost capacity?

You cannot make a new LPA if you no longer have the required mental capacity. If you have a valid EPA, it may need to be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian. If there is no suitable power of attorney, the family may need to consider deputyship through the Court of Protection.

How much does it cost to register an EPA?

The current OPG fee is £92, unless a reduction or exemption applies.

How much does an LPA cost?

The current OPG registration fee is £92 per LPA. If you make both a Property and Financial Affairs LPA and a Health and Welfare LPA, the OPG fees total £184, before any additional service or professional costs.

Do I need a solicitor to replace an EPA?

No. Government guidance says you do not need a lawyer to make an LPA unless you have unusual or specific requirements. You can use the government’s online service or paper forms, or choose a service such as Power of Attorney Online for guided completion and checking.

So, should you replace your old EPA?

There’s no automatic deadline. If you have a properly made EPA from before October 2007, it has not suddenly become invalid because LPAs now exist. But an old document is worth opening and reviewing.

Who is named as attorney? Are they still the people you trust? Can they still act? Does the EPA only cover the financial decisions you need? What would happen if you became seriously ill? Who would make decisions about your care? Who would speak to doctors? Who would decide where you live if you could no longer make that decision yourself? If the answer to those questions exposes a gap, that is the point at which an LPA becomes relevant.

For some people, the answer will be to keep the EPA and add a Health and Welfare LPA. For others, the cleaner option will be to replace the EPA with a new Property and Financial Affairs LPA and make a Health and Welfare LPA as well.

And if capacity is already being questioned, it is important not to drift. An LPA can only be made while the donor has the necessary capacity.

That is ultimately why reviewing an old EPA is worthwhile. Not because the document is necessarily defective, but because the life you were planning for in 2006 may not be the life you need to plan for today.