Let me start this blog by saying that a large part of my working life filling out forms. You could say I am an expert at filling them out. But I have never gone through a process as difficult as setting up enduring power of attorney for my parents. And it still isn’t finished, the documents have just gone for review, which I’m told can take 2 – 3 months.
Enduring power of attorney is extremely important. As we get older, we may lose the capacity to make decisions. With that lose of capacity comes to loss to make financial decisions. You need to have someone who can make those financial decisions on your behalf, especially when it comes to paying for home help or nursing homes.
You have to apply through the decision support service website which you log in with your mygovid log in details. You are best to watch all the YouTube videos and take notes before you start. You have to create a load of forms, giving you different powers under the EPOA. As I have never done this before, I’d never even thought about this so I didn’t really know what I should or shouldn’t be doing. I got through the process.
There are 8 forms to be created and printed for each parent. They had to go to a solicitor and their GP to get forms signed. There are donor and attorney forms to be signed too.
After uploading the forms, going through another few steps it is the pay and submission. The attorneys then have to log into their mygovid accounts and accept being an attorney (didn’t we fill out a form to say we were?).
Then back into my parents account but the submission button won’t work!!! On either of them! Everything on the online application is marked complete with ticks. There is a green bar that goes across the top of the screen as each step is completed. It is all the way across marked 100%. I eventually get to talk to someone is DSS who tells me there is a glitch in the application and they will have to submit the application manually themselves.
There used to be experts you could pay to do this for you but the DSS decided to you didn’t need them. Part of their job was setting up enduring power of attorney. They knew what they were doing, what to put in, what to leave out and any of the little things that need to be done that you know of if you have experience in doing these things.
Instead, someone decided that this extremely important legal power is easy to set up and does not need any legal expertise, it can be done by the lay public. Instead of using a solicitor, we are being asked to be experts in things that we have never done before and probably won’t do again.
Both my sister and I are attorneys for my parents. We have to sign a form agreeing to be attorneys, which have to be witnessed. I printed them off, gave me sister her forms and I had mine. She brought hers home, signed it and her neighbours witnessed it. I had work colleagues witness mine. Nope, they had to be the same witnesses!!! Nowhere in the YouTube videos does it tell you that.
And not only that, the dates were wrong. The declarations by the donor and the attorneys have to be dated before the date on the statement of capacity form that is signed by the GP. I do not understand why that makes a difference, but it does. If the date on the donor and attorneys forms are after the statement of capacity, your application will be sent back.
For the notice parties, you must tell certain people that you are making the enduring power of attorney. You must give notice to the following people as they are mandatory notice parties:
If you don’t have at least three of the people listed above, you must notify a minimum of two people you know such as friends, family or professionals.
Of course, a solicitor who does this as part of their job would know this but they have been cut out of the process. I would have happily paid someone to take on this frustration for me there is not even the option of appointing a solicitor to do it for you, you must do it yourself. It is a broken system.
Steven Barrett
22 June