Enduring power of attorney (EPA)

Enduring powers of attorney (EPA) has been replaced by lasting power of attorney (LPA). However, if you made and signed an EPA before 1 October 2007, it’s still valid.

You might already be using it without having registered it, so that someone can act on your behalf (unlike an LPA, which must be registered before use). This is fine, until you become unable to make your own decisions relating to financial and property matters.

Once this happens, the EPA must be registered (and this could take upto 40 days) before your attorney can take any further action on your behalf. At this point it’s the responsibility of your attorney to register the EPA with the Office of the Public Guardian.

Remember that an EPA only covers decisions about your property and financial affairs; an attorney doesn’t have power under an EPA to make decisions about your health and welfare. You might want to consider setting up a health and  welfare LPA to work alongside the existing EPA. Please feel free to contact us and we can help with this together with a review of the new Care Act 2014 provisions.