Lasting Power of Attorney: Autonomy, Trust and Control

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)

24th July 2025

Updated: Monday 31st August 2026

A Lasting Power of Attorney: Autonomy, Trust and Control might sound like a fairly dry legal subject, but underneath the paperwork is a much more human question: who do you want making important decisions for you if one day you cannot make them yourself? An LPA is one of the few legal arrangements that allows you to answer that question in advance. You choose the people you trust, decide what authority they should have and put those wishes into a legal document while you still have the capacity to make that decision. The paradox is that the document designed to protect your independence is often postponed precisely because people feel independent and do not think they need it yet. By the time an LPA becomes obviously necessary, it may be too late to make one. That is why planning ahead is not really about expecting something to go wrong. It is about keeping your choices in your own hands for as long as possible.

Why an LPA is really about autonomy

There is a strange contradiction in the way many of us think about future planning. We value independence. We want to make our own decisions.

We don’t particularly like the idea of somebody else taking over our finances, healthcare or personal affairs. Yet those concerns can make us reluctant to create an LPA.

The thinking often goes something like this: “I am perfectly capable of looking after myself, so why would I give somebody else power over my affairs?” It is an understandable reaction.

But it misunderstands what an LPA is designed to do. Creating an LPA does not mean that you have decided somebody else should run your life. It means that you have decided who should be trusted to help if circumstances change.

That is a significant difference. Without an LPA, decisions still have to be made if you lose capacity. Your money does not stop needing to be managed. Bills do not disappear. Care arrangements still have to be organised. Banks and other organisations still need someone with legal authority to deal with them.

The question is therefore not whether somebody might eventually need to make decisions. The question is whether you get to choose who that person is.

An LPA lets you make that choice while you can.

The two LPAs protect different parts of your life

There are two types of LPA in England and Wales, and they should not be treated as interchangeable.

A Property and Financial Affairs LPA allows you to appoint attorneys to deal with your finances and property within the authority you give them. This can include managing bank accounts, paying bills, dealing with pensions and benefits, managing investments and handling property.

A Health and Welfare LPA covers personal decisions such as care, where you live, your daily routine and certain medical decisions. It can also cover life-sustaining treatment if you give your attorneys the relevant authority.

The two documents answer different questions.

	Property & Financial Affairs LPA	Health & Welfare LPA
Main purpose	Managing money, property and financial affairs	Managing health, care and welfare decisions
Bank accounts	Yes, within authority	No
Property	Yes, within authority	No
Pensions and benefits	Yes, within authority	No
Care arrangements	Not its purpose	Yes
Where you live	Not its purpose	Yes
Medical decisions	No	Yes, where the LPA applies
Can it operate while you have capacity?	Potentially, if set up and used with your authority	No
When does it matter most?	When financial affairs need managing	When you cannot make relevant welfare decisions

For many people, making both gives the most complete protection. But they are still two separate legal documents.

The big paradox: waiting to protect your independence can put it at risk

This is the uncomfortable part. Most people don’t avoid an LPA because they have decided they want someone else making decisions for them.

They avoid it because they do not want to think about needing someone else to make decisions.

It can feel premature. It can feel morbid. It can feel like admitting that you are getting older or that something might happen to you.

So it gets pushed down the list. There is always something more immediate to deal with. The kitchen needs doing. The holiday needs booking. The children need help. Work is busy. The paperwork can wait.

The problem is that an LPA only works as a planning tool if it is made while you still have the capacity to make it. If someone loses the necessary capacity before making an LPA, the family cannot simply create one on their behalf. They may instead have to consider deputyship through the Court of Protection.

That is the paradox. The moment when an LPA feels most obviously necessary may be the moment when it is no longer possible to make one.

This is why an LPA is best thought of as something you put in place before there is a problem, rather than something you arrange once the problem arrives.

What happens if there is no LPA?

This is where the difference between legal authority and family responsibility becomes important. Families often assume that if a parent loses capacity, the adult children can simply step in.

They may have looked after their parent for years. They may already deal with the shopping, appointments and household administration. They may know exactly what their parent would want.

But none of that automatically gives them legal authority to manage the person’s financial affairs. A bank can’t simply accept instructions from somebody because they are the person’s daughter. A pension provider cannot necessarily release information because somebody is the person’s son. A care provider cannot assume that a relative has authority to make every welfare decision.

The absence of an LPA can therefore create a gap between being the person who knows best and being the person legally authorised to act. That gap is where families can find themselves struggling.

The financial consequences can arrive quickly

Imagine a parent has a stroke and is unable to manage their affairs. The family knows there is money available to pay the mortgage and household bills. They know which account it is in. They know the parent would want the bills paid.

But knowing where the money is doesn’t automatically create authority to use it. Without an appropriate legal authority, the family may have difficulty accessing or managing accounts. Bills can accumulate. Property decisions may be delayed. Pension arrangements may need attention. Care costs may need to be dealt with.

If the person owns a property and it becomes necessary to sell or rent it, the lack of authority can become even more significant. This is one reason a Property and Financial Affairs LPA can be so valuable. It isn’t really about handing someone your bank card.

It’s about establishing a legal framework in advance so that the right person can manage your financial affairs if you cannot.

Health and care decisions are different

The same principle applies to health and welfare, but the rules are different.

A common assumption is that a spouse or adult child will automatically be able to make healthcare decisions if someone loses capacity. That isn’t quite how the system works.

A Health and Welfare LPA allows you to appoint attorneys to make relevant decisions on your behalf when you lack capacity to make those decisions yourself.

This can include decisions about care and living arrangements, and in some circumstances medical treatment. It can be particularly important when families have strong views about what a person would have wanted.

Would they want to remain at home for as long as possible? Would they prefer residential care if living independently became unsafe? Who would they trust to speak to healthcare professionals? What matters to them about their daily routine? What would they want their family to know about their values and preferences?

An LPA can’t guarantee that every future situation will unfold exactly as you imagined. Life rarely works that neatly. But it gives your chosen attorneys a clear legal role and gives them the benefit of knowing that you chose them.

An LPA does not mean your attorney can do whatever they want

This is another important misconception. An attorney doesn’t become the owner of the donor’s money. They don’t simply inherit control.

They are acting on behalf of the donor and must follow the legal duties attached to the role. That includes acting within the authority granted to them and making decisions in accordance with the donor’s best interests where the Mental Capacity Act framework requires it.

The attorney should not treat the donor’s money as their own. They should keep appropriate records. They should be able to account for decisions. The Office of the Public Guardian can investigate concerns about attorneys.

So an LPA isn’t a blank cheque. It’s a structured legal relationship built around trust and responsibility.

That is part of what makes choosing the right attorney so important.

Choosing an attorney is really choosing a relationship

The person you appoint doesn’t have to be the person who is closest to you. They need to be someone you trust to act responsibly.

Sometimes that will be a spouse. Sometimes an adult child. Sometimes a sibling, friend or professional.

The important question is not simply “Who loves me?”

It’s “Who would make sensible decisions for me, even when those decisions are difficult?”

That distinction matters.

An attorney may eventually have to deal with banks, pension providers, insurers, care organisations or property matters. They may have to make decisions when family members disagree. They may have to balance your wishes against practical realities. They may have to keep detailed records. You are therefore choosing someone for a position of responsibility, not simply giving someone a nice title.

Multiple attorneys require more thought than people realise

You can appoint more than one attorney. But the structure you choose matters. You can generally appoint attorneys to act jointly, meaning they must act together, or jointly and severally, meaning they can generally act independently or together.

That can make a substantial difference in real life. If two attorneys are appointed jointly and one becomes unable to act, the arrangement may become difficult or fail depending on the terms of the LPA. With jointly and severally appointed attorneys, one attorney may be able to continue acting if another can’t.

There is no universally correct structure. It depends on the family. But it’s a decision worth considering rather than simply selecting an option because it appears first on the form.

Instructions and preferences can help, but less is sometimes more

An LPA allows you to include preferences and instructions. These can be useful.

For example, you might want to express a preference about where you live or how attorneys should approach a particular aspect of your affairs. But there’s a temptation to try to write a complete instruction manual for every possible future situation.

That can create problems. The future is difficult to predict. A badly worded instruction can also restrict attorneys unnecessarily or create uncertainty about whether the LPA can operate as intended.

In some circumstances, a simple expression of preference may be more appropriate than a legally binding instruction. This is another reason to think carefully about what you actually need the document to achieve. The best LPA isn’t necessarily the longest one.

It’s the one that clearly expresses the authority you intend to give without creating unnecessary complications.

What happens when an LPA is registered?

Making the document is only part of the process. The LPA must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian before the attorney can use it.

GOV.UK currently says registration takes around 8 to 10 weeks if there are no mistakes in the application. The current registration fee is £92 per LPA, with exemptions and reductions available for some people depending on their circumstances.

This is another reason not to wait until an LPA is urgently needed. The process itself takes time. And mistakes can cause further delay.

A donor therefore has a much stronger position when the LPA is already registered and sitting ready to use. They don’t need to predict exactly when it will be needed. They simply need to have done the work while they could.

An LPA is one part of a bigger later-life plan

There is another reason an LPA conversation can be so valuable.

Once you start thinking seriously about who would look after your affairs if you could no longer make decisions yourself, it often opens the door to wider questions about what you are trying to protect.

Who would manage your money? What happens to the family home? How would your family cope if you needed long-term care? Is your Will still appropriate? What happens to your assets when you die? Are there sensible steps you should be considering now if you have built up significant family wealth?

These are different questions, but they are connected.

An LPA deals primarily with decision-making during your lifetime. A Will deals with what happens to your estate after your death. Trusts and wider estate planning can address other questions around how wealth is held, protected and passed between generations.

That is why we think there is a natural relationship between Power of Attorney Online and specialist estate planners such as Deep Dive Estate Planning.

Deep Dive specialises in later-life planning and inheritance tax, with its own lifetime planning service covering areas including trusts and gifting. Its stated approach is to provide detailed guidance without jargon or unnecessary complications.

Their planning journey starts with an introduction call, followed by a discovery meeting, an estate planning report and, where appropriate, implementation.

For someone who has just started thinking about an LPA, that doesn’t mean they suddenly need complicated estate planning. They may not.

But for someone with a substantial estate, a family business, property, existing trusts or concerns about inheritance tax, the LPA can be the beginning of a much bigger conversation.

And that is perhaps the most useful way to look at future planning. An LPA answers who can make decisions for you while you are alive. Your wider estate plan answers what you want to happen to what you have built, both during your lifetime and afterwards.

Getting the first question sorted can sometimes be the prompt to start thinking properly about the second.

What an LPA can’t do

It’s also useful to understand the boundaries. An LPA doesn’t continue after death.

Once the donor dies, the attorney’s authority ends. The person’s Will and estate administration arrangements then become relevant.

An LPA also does not give attorneys unlimited powers. They can’t simply use the donor’s assets for themselves.

They can’t ignore the donor’s wishes. They can’t assume that being an attorney means they have a personal entitlement to the donor’s money. And a Health and Welfare LPA can’t be used simply because an attorney thinks the donor is making a decision they disagree with.

Capacity is decision-specific. The donor should be supported to make their own decisions wherever possible.

That’s another reason the idea of an LPA as a “loss of control” is so misleading. The underlying legal framework is designed around preserving autonomy, not removing it.

The wider benefit: clarity for families and professionals

There is also a broader reason LPAs matter. They create clarity.

For families, there is a clear answer to the question of who has been chosen. For banks, there is a legal document establishing the attorney’s authority. For care providers, there is a defined person who can act within the scope of the LPA. For healthcare professionals, a Health and Welfare LPA can clarify who has authority to make relevant decisions when the donor lacks capacity.

That doesn’t mean an LPA eliminates every disagreement. Families are still families. People can have different views.

But a registered LPA removes one major area of uncertainty: who the donor chose to act for them. That can be enormously valuable when emotions are already running high.

The cost of planning versus the cost of not planning

An LPA is relatively inexpensive compared with the potential consequences of having to resolve matters after capacity has been lost.

The current OPG registration fee is £92 per LPA. Power of Attorney Online currently charges £125 for a single LPA or £250 for a pair, plus the applicable OPG registration fees.

The comparison is not simply about pounds and pence. If there is no LPA and the family needs to apply to the Court of Protection for authority, the process can become significantly more involved.

The current Court of Protection application fee is £432, before considering any professional fees or other costs that may arise.

Planning route	Main advantage	Main drawback
Make and register an LPA in advance	You choose who acts and establish authority before it is needed	Requires planning while you have capacity
Delay until a crisis	No immediate paperwork or cost	It may be too late to make an LPA
Court of Protection deputyship	Provides a route where capacity has already been lost	Court involvement, additional cost, delay and less direct choice for the person concerned

The most important number is therefore not necessarily the registration fee. It is zero. Zero is the number of LPAs you have if you keep putting it off.

What our own experience tells us

Our founder, Matt Cresswell, founded Power of Attorney Online following his father’s diagnosis with dementia and the experience of seeing first-hand how confusing the LPA process could be for a family.

That experience shapes the way we approach the subject. An LPA is not just a form. It’s a decision about trust. It’s a decision about independence. And it is a decision about what happens to your family if something changes.

People don’t necessarily say they wanted more legal jargon. They talk about clarity. They talk about reassurance. They talk about knowing they had completed the paperwork correctly. That is exactly the gap we set out to address.

Why online LPA services exist alongside GOV.UK and solicitors

There is a perfectly legitimate free route through GOV.UK. There is also a perfectly legitimate solicitor-led route. Power of Attorney Online sits between those two options.

We don’t believe everyone needs to pay for help. If you are comfortable completing the official forms yourself, GOV.UK gives you the tools to do so.

If your circumstances are legally complex, you may be better served by a solicitor who can give bespoke advice. But there is a large middle ground.

People who understand that they need an LPA but do not want to navigate the process completely alone. People who want somebody to check the application before it is signed. People who want plain-English guidance rather than legal terminology.

People who want reassurance without paying for a full solicitor service. That’s the problem our service is designed to solve.

Planning ahead is not expecting the worst

Perhaps the most useful mental shift is to stop thinking about an LPA as preparation for something bad.

Think about it as preparation for uncertainty. You might never need your attorney to step in. You might remain capable of managing your own affairs for the rest of your life. That doesn’t make the LPA pointless.

It means you made a sensible decision about something that was uncertain. We insure our homes without expecting them to burn down. We wear seatbelts without expecting to crash. We keep emergency contact details without expecting an emergency.

An LPA belongs in much the same category. It’s a practical way of saying “If something changes, I want the people I trust to be able to help.” There is nothing morbid about that. In many families, it is actually an act of consideration.

An LPA can be a gift to your future self

There is also a less obvious benefit. Making an LPA can force conversations that families might otherwise avoid.

Who would you trust? What matters to you? Would you want to stay at home? Who should manage your money? What would you want your children to know? Would you want them to be able to speak to doctors about your care?

These are not always easy conversations. But avoiding them doesn’t make the questions disappear. It simply means someone else may eventually have to answer them without you.

Planning gives you the opportunity to answer them yourself. Even if the final LPA is relatively simple, the conversation behind it can be valuable.

The quiet revolution in autonomy and trust

There is nothing particularly dramatic about an LPA. There’s no ceremony. No announcement. No visible change in your day-to-day life.

You complete the application. You sign it. The relevant people sign it. You register it. Then you put it away.

That is part of why LPAs are so easy to overlook. But the quietness is exactly what makes them powerful.

An LPA takes a decision that might otherwise be made by institutions, professionals or courts and allows you to make it yourself while you still can.

It says: This is who I trust. This is the authority I want them to have. These are the decisions I want them to be able to make.

That is autonomy. Not independence at all costs. Not pretending that none of us will ever need help.

Real independence includes being able to decide how you want to be helped when you need it. And that is the part of an LPA that is easy to miss.

The real cost of waiting

The biggest misconception about an LPA may be that making one means admitting you are losing control.

In reality, delaying one can create a much greater risk of losing control. Without an LPA, your family may have to navigate banks, care providers and legal processes without the authority you could have given them yourself. A Court of Protection application may become necessary. Decisions may take longer. Costs can increase. Family disagreements can become harder to resolve.

And, perhaps most importantly, the person at the centre of it all may no longer be able to say who they want to act for them. That is the paradox.

We delay LPAs because we want to remain independent. Yet the act of planning ahead is one of the clearest ways to preserve our independence when circumstances change. A Lasting Power of Attorney is not about handing your future away. It’s about choosing who you trust with it.

But once you start having that conversation, it is worth recognising that an LPA is only one part of the picture. Your LPA deals with who can make decisions for you during your lifetime if you cannot make them yourself. Your Will deals with what happens to your estate after you die. And for some families, wider lifetime planning, trusts, inheritance tax planning and decisions about how wealth should be passed between generations become important too.

You do not necessarily need all of these things. But you should know which questions apply to you.

That is why we think the best future planning is not about buying a collection of legal documents. It is about understanding what you are trying to protect, who you want to protect it for and what could happen if circumstances change. For a straightforward LPA, Power of Attorney Online can help you put the right authority in place.

For families whose questions extend into wider estate planning and inheritance tax, a specialist such as Deep Dive Estate Planning can provide a different layer of expertise. Deep Dive’s own planning process is built around understanding a family’s circumstances, developing an estate planning report and implementing appropriate planning where needed.

The important thing is to start while you still have choices. Because that is ultimately what good future planning gives you. Choices.

Who helps you. How they help you. What happens to your affairs. And, ultimately, what happens to the things you have spent your life building.