Everyone likes to get value for money and there’s nothing more frustrating than feeling that you’re paying more for something than you really need to. With that in mind, you may wonder why you would pay a fee to arrange a Power of Attorney (POA) when you can do it yourself.
The answer is peace of mind.
It is possible to arrange your own POA for less than legal professionals may charge. You can order all the forms you need through government websites, or download them and print them off. You can fill them in by yourself at home and take responsibility for sending them off for official registration (a POA cannot be used until it has been registered properly with the Office of the Public Guardian).
The fees you will pay for registering a POA yourself are £110 in England and Wales and £74 in Scotland, and that might seem like a good bit less than we charge. For some people that could be a saving worth making, but wrapped up in our fixed fee are a range of services that mean you can relax, secure in the knowledge that your POA has been taken care of professionally.
The most important thing to remember when you are filling out complicated legal forms for yourself is that if you make a mistake, you are liable for any errors and subsequent fees charged to resubmit corrected forms. With our professional POA arrangement service, all the forms are completed on your behalf and checked thoroughly before we send them off for registration.
Expert Consultants
Included in the Golden Charter POA price is a home visit from one of our trained consultants. So even before you complete the paperwork, they will talk you through the ins and outs of the POA process in your own home, explaining your options and answering any questions you might have.
We complete and check all forms on your behalf and, besides all your personal details, the consultant will help you decide:
- Who you want your attorneys to be (the people who act on your behalf under the POA)
- How many attorneys you need
- Replacement attorneys to step in if original attorneys can no longer act
- How your attorneys will make decisions on your behalf; acting together, individually or a mixture of the two
- If you have any instructions you want to give your attorneys about how to make decisions
- If you have any preferences you want to state about your beliefs and values
- If there are there any 'people to notify' about your POA when it is about to be registered
Your consultant, as a representative of the official certificate provider, can also act as an independent person to sign your POA.
One more thing to realise when you do it yourself is that you will be charged a registration fee for every POA. Most people arrange POAs to cover both Finance & Property and Health & Welfare, so the total cost in England is actually £220. With Golden Charter, the arrangement of both types is included within one fee.
Peace of mind
The price of a professional provider will always appear higher than the cost of the DIY option. But with experience in dealing with Power of Attorneys, the convenience and the peace of mind they bring have to be factored in to make a true comparison. The price of a Golden Charter POA includes all the registration fees that you will pay if you choose to go down the DIY route, plus the knowledge that it will be done properly. And our costs are fixed – unlike most solicitors who charge by the hour (source: alzheimers.org.uk, 2014).
That one fixed fee covers the whole arrangement process, from the initial, no-obligation consultation in your own home to the final registration of your legal documents. One price, for peace of mind.
Golden Charter arranges Powers of Attorney for a large variety of people, including many existing customers who already have other later life planning products like Wills, Trusts and funeral plans with us. For more information on POA, take a look at our blog. Or find out more about Golden Charter by calling free on 0800 111 4514.
