The day the bank stopped talking to us

A phone call came in just before lunch. "My dad's had a stroke. We need to access his accounts to pay his care home. What do we do?"

We asked the question we always ask. "Does he have an LPA?"

There was a long pause.

What the bank says when there's no LPA

We've had this conversation many times. The names change, the circumstances vary — sometimes it's a parent, sometimes a spouse, sometimes an adult child with a sudden accident. But the shape is always the same. Something has happened, money needs moving, and the bank has stopped responding to anyone except the account holder.

Because that's what banks do. Not out of obstruction, but out of legal obligation. If you walk into a branch and explain that your father has had a stroke and can't come in himself, the staff will be sympathetic. They will offer you a seat. And then they will tell you there's nothing they can do.

Without a Lasting Power of Attorney — specifically, a Property and Financial LPA that has been registered with the Office of the Public Guardian — the bank cannot legally take instructions from anyone other than the account holder. Not a spouse. Not an adult child. Not someone with a doctor's letter. Nobody. The account is locked to the person whose name is on it, and that person is lying in a hospital bed unable to sign anything.

The care home fees are still due. They don't pause because someone is in hospital.

The mortgage doesn't stop. The utility bills keep coming. And the family trying to manage all of this finds themselves locked out of the finances they need to do it.

The Court of Protection: what it actually involves

The only legal route, when someone has lost mental capacity without a Lasting Power of Attorney in place, is an application to the Court of Protection.

The Court of Protection exists to protect people who can no longer make decisions for themselves, and in the right circumstances it does important work. But it was not designed to replace basic planning that didn't happen, and the process reflects that.

To become a deputy — the Court's equivalent of an LPA attorney — you apply, pay an application fee of around £400, and wait. The standard timescale is eight to twelve months. Some cases come through faster. Some take longer. The family is not in control of the timetable.

During those eight to twelve months, the person's financial life continues. Bills arrive. Care fees accumulate. Property needs maintaining. If there's a business, decisions need making. Families do the best they can — drawing on their own money, making informal arrangements with care providers patient enough to wait, hoping nothing breaks that can't be held together informally.

Without a registered LPA, the bank cannot take instructions from anyone. Not a spouse. Not an adult child. Nobody.

When the Deputyship Order finally arrives, the relief is real. But it doesn't end there.

A deputy operates under ongoing supervision by the Office of the Public Guardian in a way that an LPA attorney does not. Every year, accounts are filed showing how the person's finances have been managed. There is an annual supervision fee — currently around £320 for most cases. That obligation continues for as long as the deputyship is in force, which may be many years.

The family in this story

The family who called us just before lunch — we'll call them the Marshalls, though that's not their name — hadn't done anything wrong. They were good people who loved their dad. He'd always been healthy. He was 71, still driving, still doing his own shopping. There'd never been a moment that felt urgent enough to raise the LPA conversation, and then one Tuesday morning there was a stroke, and now here they were.

We walked them through the Court of Protection process as clearly as we could. We gave them the OPG's contact details and explained where they could get help with the application. We talked through what banks can sometimes do under a Third Party Mandate for basic transactions while a deputyship application is in progress — not a solution, but sometimes a bridge.

We couldn't give them what they actually needed. A registered Lasting Power of Attorney doesn't exist until it exists. There's no retrospective version.

The Marshalls submitted their application. Eight months later, the Deputyship Order came through. Their dad was still alive — quieter than before, less himself, but alive. The care home had been reasonable about the financial arrangements in the interim. Not every care provider is.

They spent eight months managing the aftermath of that Tuesday with their hands tied. At the end of it, the annual supervision fees began.

What this costs, and what it means

A Lasting Power of Attorney costs £92 per document to register with the OPG. That's the statutory fee, fixed. There are two documents in a full LPA — Property and Financial, and Health and Welfare — so the registration cost for both is £184. Add a service fee if you use a provider like us, and the total is still a fraction of what a Court of Protection application costs, let alone the annual supervision after that.

More than the money: an LPA is something you set up once, when you're well and capable and calm, and it sits in a drawer doing nothing until it's needed. Or hoped — genuinely hoped — until it's never needed. That's the best outcome.

A Deputyship application is something you're forced into at the worst possible moment, when someone is in hospital and the bills are piling up and the family is exhausted and the last thing anybody needs is a court process.

These are not equivalent options. One is planning. The other is the cost of not planning.

The Marshalls' situation was hard but not unusual. We hear versions of it regularly. The conversation always starts the same way — a stroke, a fall, a sudden diagnosis — and the pause that follows our question is always the same pause.

An LPA you don't need yet is cheap. A Deputyship Order you needed last month is expensive in every way that matters.