Powers of Attorney

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Our Private Client department is led by partner, Jacqueline Dow.  Jacqueline was admitted as a solicitor in 1992, joined the firm in 2018 and was assumed as a partner in 2020. 

We encourage all of our clients to grant Powers of Attorney and we consider them to be just as important as a Will.   A Power of Attorney is a legal document which gives someone you trust the authority to act and make decisions on your behalf should you become unable to do so.  

When someone loses the capacity to deal with their own affairs, their family and next of kin have no automatic legal authority to take on those responsibilities.   Without a Power of Attorney, no-one has the power to deal with your money, make decisions about your health and welfare, or about other important matters.   If you lose capacity and have not granted a Power of Attorney, it may be necessary to apply to the court for a Guardianship Order, which can be a much more lengthy and expensive process, and something that most people wish to avoid. 

The process involves:

• we will meet you to take details from you and provide advice;
• we will draft the Power of Attorney document;
• we will meet you again to go through the document and have it signed by you and countersigned by the solicitor;
• we will send the document to the Office of the Public Guardian in Scotland (OPG) for registration.

We are able to charge a fixed fee for Powers of Attorney in many cases.  In the ordinary circumstance, our fixed fee for Powers of Attorney are:

Single Power of Attorney - £300.00 plus VAT (£60.00);

Powers of Attorney for couples - £400.00 plus VAT (£80.00). 

There will be a separate one-off charge of £10 plus VAT at 20% for individual an £12 plus VAT at 20% for couples in respect of our gathering (and updating, where necessary), documentation to comply with the Anti-Money Laundering regulations and administrative matters when opening your file.

There is also an outlay (currently £81.00) to register the Power of Attorney with the Office of the Public Guardian.   This is payable for each individual Power of Attorney, so for couples the cost would be £162.00.  

In some circumstances a Medical Report maybe required to confirm whether or not a client has legal capacity to sign the document and a Doctor may charge an additional fee for this.

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