What’s the Difference Between an LPA and a Will?

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)

14th April 2025

Updated: Thursday 27th August 2026

If you have ever wondered What’s the Difference Between an LPA and a Will?, the simplest way to think about it is this: a Will deals with what happens to your estate after you die, while a Lasting Power of Attorney helps protect you while you are alive if you can no longer make decisions for yourself. They are not alternatives, and one cannot replace the other. A Will can set out who should inherit your money, property and possessions and who should deal with your estate after your death. An LPA allows you to choose people you trust to make certain decisions on your behalf during your lifetime if you lose the ability to make those decisions yourself. For most people, proper future planning means having both a Will and the appropriate LPAs in place.

That distinction is the key to understanding why families often need both.

A Will can’t give your spouse, children or anyone else authority to manage your affairs if you are still alive but unable to make decisions. An LPA can’t decide who inherits your estate after you die.

They solve two completely different problems, at different points in life. And there is an important gap between the two.

Imagine you have a Will leaving everything to your children. You then have a serious stroke and lose the ability to manage your finances.

Your Will doesn’t help your family access your bank accounts. It doesn’t allow your children to deal with your investments. It doesn’t give anyone authority to make decisions about your care. It only becomes relevant after you die.

If you have a registered LPA, however, the person or people you chose can potentially step in and deal with the decisions covered by that LPA. That’s why an LPA is not simply a more complicated version of a Will. It is planning for a completely different stage of life.

What a Will actually does

A Will is primarily about your estate after death. It allows you to state who you want to inherit your money, property and possessions and to nominate the people responsible for administering your estate. You can also use a Will to appoint guardians for children under 18 and include other wishes, such as funeral preferences.

The important point is timing. A Will has no authority over your affairs while you are alive. You might have the most carefully drafted Will imaginable, naming your spouse as your sole beneficiary and your children as executors. If you lose mental capacity tomorrow, none of those provisions gives your family authority to manage your affairs while you are alive.

Your Will is waiting for the point at which your estate needs to be dealt with. That’s why it is dangerous to think of a Will as the document that “sorts everything out”.

It sorts out one very important part of your future planning. It doesn’t cover incapacity.

What happens if you die without a Will?

If you die without a valid Will, your estate is generally distributed according to the rules of intestacy rather than according to your personal wishes. That can produce an outcome you didn’t expect. It can also create additional uncertainty for the people left behind, particularly where there are children from previous relationships, unmarried partners or more complicated family circumstances.

A Will therefore gives you an opportunity to make your wishes clear rather than leaving your family to rely on the default legal rules. But again, that is an issue after death.

It doesn’t solve the incapacity problem.

What an LPA actually does

An LPA is about your life while you are still here. It allows you to appoint one or more people, known as attorneys, to make decisions on your behalf within the authority you give them.

There are two types of LPA in England and Wales.

A Property and Financial Affairs LPA deals with financial and property decisions. Depending on the authority given, this can include things such as managing bank accounts, paying bills, dealing with investments, managing property and handling other financial affairs.

A Health and Welfare LPA covers personal decisions such as care, where you live and certain medical decisions. It can only be used when the donor lacks the capacity to make the particular decision themselves.

The two documents are separate because the decisions are fundamentally different. You might want the same person to handle both. You might prefer different people.

There’s no requirement for your financial attorney and health and welfare attorney to be the same person.

That is one of the useful things about making an LPA while you still have capacity: you choose who you trust before somebody else has to make that decision for you.

LPA vs Will: the difference at a glance

	Will	Lasting Power of Attorney
Main purpose	Decides what happens to your estate	Allows chosen people to make decisions for you
When does it operate?	After death	During your lifetime
Can it deal with your bank accounts while you are alive?	No	Yes, with a Property and Financial Affairs LPA
Can it cover care decisions?	No	Yes, with a Health and Welfare LPA
Can it decide who inherits your estate?	Yes	No
Can you choose who acts for you?	You appoint executors	You appoint attorneys
Can it help if you lose mental capacity?	No	Yes, if properly made and registered
Does it need to be registered?	No	Yes, an LPA must be registered before it can be used
Can you make one after losing capacity?	A Will has its own capacity requirements	No, an LPA must be made while you have the required capacity
What happens when you die?	Your executors administer the estate	Attorney authority ends

That last point is worth remembering. An LPA doesn’t carry on after death.

Once the donor dies, the attorney’s authority under the LPA ends. Responsibility for the estate then moves to the people dealing with the deceased’s estate, usually the executors named in the Will.

So there is a natural handover between the two documents.

The LPA is about your decisions while you are alive.

The Will is about your estate after you die.

Can a Will replace a Lasting Power of Attorney?

No. This is probably the most important misconception to clear up.

People sometimes say things like: “My wife is named in my Will, so she’ll be able to look after everything.” Or: “My children are my beneficiaries, so they can deal with my bank.”

Neither is correct. Being a beneficiary doesn’t give someone authority over your affairs while you are alive. Being an executor does not give someone authority to manage your affairs while you are alive either.

An executor’s role arises after death. If you lose mental capacity without an appropriate LPA in place, your family does not simply step into your shoes because they are your closest relatives.

They may need to apply to the Court of Protection for a deputyship order. That’s a fundamentally different route.

Instead of you choosing who should act for you, the court becomes involved in deciding who should have authority and what they can do. That can take time and involve additional costs and administration. It’s one of the main reasons planning an LPA before it is needed matters.

Does being married mean my spouse can act for me?

No, not automatically. This is another area where the difference between a Will and an LPA becomes very practical.

A spouse may have access to some jointly held accounts or assets. They may already deal with many household bills. They may know exactly what you would want.

But none of those things automatically gives them comprehensive legal authority over your separate financial affairs or your personal decisions. Marriage doesn’t create a general power of attorney.

The same applies to children. Your adult children do not automatically gain legal authority over your bank accounts, investments or property simply because they are your children.

An LPA lets you make that choice in advance. That’s particularly important if you have strong views about who should make decisions for you.

Why the timing of an LPA matters so much

There is one crucial difference between making a Will and making an LPA.

An LPA must be made while you have the mental capacity to make it. That means there is a deadline you can’t necessarily see coming.

You might intend to sort out your LPA next year. You might think you are too young to need one. You might decide to wait until your health starts to deteriorate.

The problem is that the very circumstances that make an LPA important can also remove the ability to create one. A serious illness, stroke, accident or progression of a condition affecting mental capacity can change the situation very quickly.

If you have already lost the required capacity, your family cannot simply ask you to sign an LPA because it has become inconvenient for them to manage your affairs. They may have to look at deputyship instead.

This is why an LPA is fundamentally a planning document. You make the decision while you are able to make it. You choose your attorneys. You decide what authority they should have. You can think through how you want things handled.

Then the document sits there until it is needed.

What happens if there is no LPA?

This is where the difference between a Will and an LPA can become expensive and stressful.

Suppose someone has a perfectly valid Will but no LPA. They then lose capacity. Their family may discover that they can’t simply take over the person’s financial affairs.

The bank may require evidence of legal authority. A property transaction may become more complicated.

Bills and financial administration may need to be dealt with. There may also be decisions around care and living arrangements. If there’s no LPA, the family may need to apply to the Court of Protection for deputyship in relation to financial decisions.

That is a very different experience from having an LPA already registered and naming the people you trust. And importantly, a Will does nothing to prevent this.

Your Will could be perfectly valid. Your family could know exactly what you want to happen to your estate. You could still have a problem managing your affairs while you are alive.

What does an LPA cost compared with a Will?

The cost depends on how you choose to prepare each document, but there is an important distinction with LPAs.

The Office of the Public Guardian currently charges £92 to register each LPA. If you want both types of LPA, that means £184 in registration fees. Couples who both make both types would normally have four LPAs and therefore £368 in registration fees at the full rate.

The government provides an online LPA service, so you do not have to pay a solicitor simply to create an LPA. You can also use a specialist online service for guided completion and checking, or instruct a solicitor if your circumstances call for professional legal advice.

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

A Will has a different cost structure because there is no equivalent OPG registration fee. The important point is not to compare the documents simply by price. They are doing different jobs.

The better question is what risk you are trying to deal with.

A Will and LPA are part of a bigger plan

There is another useful point here. Getting a Will and an LPA in place is not necessarily the end of the planning process. It is the point at which the important pieces start to fit together.

That is something we like about what Adeus is trying to do.

Adeus takes a broader view of legacy planning. Alongside its digital Will service, it provides a secure digital vault where people can keep important documents and information together, as well as wider legacy-planning tools designed to help people see what they have in place and what they still need to do. Its current platform describes the vault as a place to keep Wills, LPAs and other important records, with encrypted storage and access from different devices.

That fits neatly alongside an LPA.

Your Will explains what should happen to your estate after you die. Your LPA deals with decisions that may need to be made while you are still alive. But neither document necessarily tells your family where everything is, who they should contact, or where the important information they need is stored.

That practical side of planning is easy to overlook. Imagine your daughter becomes your attorney or executor. She may know that you have a Will and an LPA. But does she know where the originals are? Does she know which bank you use, where your insurance documents are kept, who your accountant is or what other important information she may need?

That is where having a secure central record can make the whole plan more useful. Adeus currently combines its digital Will service with its Digital Vault and wider legacy-planning tools, giving people a way to bring important documents and information together rather than leaving family members to piece everything together later.

We think that is a sensible direction for future planning generally. The legal documents matter enormously, but so does making sure the people who eventually need to act can actually find the documents and information they need.

An LPA gives someone the authority to act. A Will tells people what should happen after your death. A service such as Adeus can help you organise the wider information around those documents so your family is not left trying to piece everything together when they need it most.

What we see when people start thinking about both

One thing that comes up repeatedly is that people often think about a Will first. That makes sense.

Death is something we associate with estate planning. Loss of capacity feels more distant and less predictable.

But the two documents often become relevant to the same family at completely different moments. A parent might have a Will leaving the house to their children. Then they start struggling with everyday financial decisions. The family wants to help.

They discover there is no LPA.

Suddenly the Will that seemed to have covered the family’s planning does not help with the problem they are facing today.

At Power of Attorney Online, our internal review data shows that around 85% of LPA applications we review contain at least one issue requiring attention. That is our own first-party application review experience, not an OPG statistic about rejection rates. It is one reason we believe the practical side of getting an LPA right deserves more attention than it often receives.

The broader lesson is simple. Future planning is not just about having the right documents. It’s about having the right document for the right moment, and making sure the people who may need them can actually find them.

What about Health and Welfare decisions?

This is where the LPA goes beyond anything a Will can provide.

A Health and Welfare LPA can cover decisions about your care and where you live, as well as certain medical decisions. It can also include an important choice about life-sustaining treatment.

The donor can choose whether their health and welfare attorneys should have authority to give or refuse consent to life-sustaining treatment on their behalf. A Will can’t do this job. A Will is not a document for directing your healthcare while you are alive.

This is another reason it can be misleading to think of a Will as your “instruction manual” for everything that happens in the future. Different documents have different legal functions.

What happens to your LPA when you die?

Your LPA does not become part of your estate. It ends when you die.

The attorney no longer has authority under the LPA. The people dealing with your estate then work from your Will, where one exists, and the applicable probate and estate administration process.

This is an important handover. It also means that your attorney can’t use your LPA after your death to continue managing your bank accounts or distributing your money.

The authority has ended. The estate now has to be dealt with under the relevant estate administration arrangements.

Do you need both LPAs as well as a Will?

For many people, having both types of LPA alongside a Will gives the most complete planning arrangement.

But that doesn’t mean everyone has identical needs. You might decide you only want a Property and Financial Affairs LPA. You might decide that you also want a Health and Welfare LPA.

You might appoint the same attorney for both. Or you might choose different people.

What matters is that you understand what each document covers before deciding. A Property and Financial Affairs LPA is about your money and property. A Health and Welfare LPA is about personal and care decisions. A Will is about your estate after death.

Once you see the three roles separately, the planning becomes much easier to understand.

A simple future-planning checklist

Question	Document that deals with it
Who inherits my estate when I die?	Will
Who administers my estate after my death?	Will and executor appointment
Who can manage my bank accounts if I lose capacity?	Property and Financial Affairs LPA
Who can deal with my property if I lose capacity?	Property and Financial Affairs LPA
Who can make relevant care decisions if I lack capacity?	Health and Welfare LPA
Who can make certain medical treatment decisions?	Health and Welfare LPA
Who can make decisions about my life after I die?	Will, through estate administration
Who do I trust to act for me while I am alive?	LPA
Who should inherit what I own?	Will

If you can answer all of those questions confidently, you are already thinking about future planning in the right way.

The documents themselves are simply the legal mechanisms that turn those decisions into something others can rely on.

Can you make an LPA online?

Yes. You can make an LPA through the GOV.UK service, using the official forms and registration process. You don’t legally need a solicitor simply to make an LPA. There are also specialist online services that guide you through the process and check the application before it is submitted.

That distinction matters. An online LPA isn’t a different type of legal document.

Whether you use GOV.UK, an online provider or a solicitor, the resulting document still has to meet the legal requirements and be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian.

The difference is the level of help you receive along the way.

At Power of Attorney Online, we guide customers through the application in plain English, provide an expert review and provide signing and registration guidance. Our current service is £125 per LPA, with the £92 OPG registration fee payable separately.

For straightforward circumstances, some people will be perfectly comfortable using GOV.UK themselves. For others, having someone check the details is worth paying for.

There is no need to make that choice based on the assumption that using an online service somehow makes the LPA less legitimate. The legal document is the LPA itself.

Why an LPA can be just as important as a Will

It is tempting to think that a Will is the more important document because it deals with everything you have spent a lifetime building.

But an LPA deals with something that happens before that point. It protects your ability to have someone you trust make decisions for you if you cannot.

That can mean paying your mortgage. Managing your savings. Dealing with your property. Handling financial administration. Organising care. Making relevant health and welfare decisions.

And, perhaps most importantly, doing those things through a person you chose in advance.

A Will can’t do that. That doesn’t make a Will less important.

It makes the two documents complementary.

In fact, if you are serious about future planning, it is difficult to see why you would deliberately deal with one and ignore the other without a clear reason.

The most useful way to think about it

Forget the terminology for a moment. Imagine two different scenarios.

Scenario one: you are alive but cannot make decisions.

Who deals with your money? Who speaks to the bank? Who manages your property? Who makes relevant decisions about your care?

That is where your LPA matters.

Scenario two: you have died.

Who inherits your money and property? Who administers your estate? Who carries out your wishes?

That is where your Will matters.

The same person may eventually be involved in both. The same family may be affected by both. But the legal authority is completely different. That is why a Will can’t replace an LPA, and an LPA can’t replace a Will.

The bottom line

A Will and a Lasting Power of Attorney are not competing versions of the same document.

A Will protects your wishes after death. An LPA protects your ability to choose who can help make decisions for you while you are alive.

If you lose capacity without an LPA, your family may have to turn to the Court of Protection for authority. If you die without a Will, your estate may be distributed under the rules of intestacy rather than according to your wishes.

Neither situation is inevitable. Both can be planned for. For many people, the sensible approach is therefore to consider a Will alongside a Property and Financial Affairs LPA and, where appropriate, a Health and Welfare LPA.

The important thing is not simply to tick “future planning” off a list. It’s to make sure you have the right document for the situation you are actually trying to protect against. And good future planning doesn’t stop when the documents are signed.

It is also about making sure the people you trust can find them, understand what they are there to do and access the information they need when the time comes.

Your Will is about what happens after you. Your LPA is about what happens to you while you are still here.

Both deserve a place in the conversation.