Being appointed is the part families concentrate on. Doing the job is where it gets uncertain, usually within a fortnight of the first bank visit.
What a registered power lets you do, and when
A property and financial affairs power, once registered with the Office of the Public Guardian, lets you deal with the accounts, pay the bills and manage the pension. The document has to be registered to have legal force at all: an instrument that does not comply confers no authority (Mental Capacity Act 2005, section 9, checked 1 November 2026).
It gives you authority alongside your parent, not instead of them. The Act’s first principle is that a person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that they lack capacity (Mental Capacity Act 2005, section 1, checked 1 November 2026), and an unwise decision is not evidence of incapacity.
When you can start is written into the form. On a property and financial affairs power, the donor chooses in section 5 between the attorneys making decisions as soon as the power is registered, and only when the donor does not have mental capacity (OPG LP1F (PDF), checked 1 November 2026). GOV.UK says you can start while the donor still has capacity only if the power says you can and the donor gives you permission (GOV.UK, Property and financial affairs attorneys, checked 1 November 2026).
Nothing can be used before registration, which GOV.UK says takes 8 to 10 weeks if there are no mistakes (GOV.UK, Register a lasting power of attorney, checked 1 November 2026). A health and welfare power is different again: the authority does not extend to decisions except where the donor lacks, or the attorney reasonably believes they lack, capacity (Mental Capacity Act 2005, section 11, checked 1 November 2026).
Deciding that capacity has gone is the attorney’s judgement, made decision by decision, not a one-off certificate. The Act says a person is unable to make a decision if they cannot understand the information relevant to it, retain it, use or weigh it, or communicate the decision (Mental Capacity Act 2005, section 3, checked 1 November 2026), and a health and welfare attorney may act where they reasonably believe that is the position. Where it is finely balanced or disputed, a doctor’s or other professional’s assessment gives that belief a firmer footing.
Where your parent does lack capacity for a decision, you make it in their best interests, and the Act tells you how. You must consider, so far as is reasonably ascertainable, their past and present wishes and feelings, and the beliefs and values that would be likely to influence their decision if they had capacity (Mental Capacity Act 2005, section 4, checked 1 November 2026).
Getting the bank to recognise it
Banks want two things: the power itself, and proof of who you are. The Office of the Public Guardian’s guide for new attorneys puts the first plainly: banks, building societies and utility companies need proof that you are the attorney (OPG LP11, checked 1 November 2026).
Take the original registered power or a certified copy, your own photo identification and proof of address, and your parent’s account details. Expect the bank to keep the paperwork for some days while a central team checks it, and expect to repeat the exercise with each institution separately.
Ask what access you will be given, because it varies. Some banks issue a card and online access in your name as attorney, others restrict you to branch and telephone, and the difference matters if you live two hundred miles away.
The online service and the access code
There is a free government service that saves posting the document around. Use a lasting power of attorney lets you give an organisation a code to view the power online, and it works for lasting powers registered since 1 January 2016 (GOV.UK, Getting started with Use an LPA, checked 1 November 2026).
The code is the part people lose. For powers registered after 17 July 2020 you need the activation key, which starts with the letter C and is valid for 12 months from registration, along with the reference number (GOV.UK, Getting started with Use an LPA, checked 1 November 2026). A new activation key can be requested through the same Use a lasting power of attorney account, so a lapsed code is an irritation rather than a disaster.
A third-party mandate is not a power of attorney
The Office of the Public Guardian says that if you have the right to handle the account of someone who has mental capacity, you have a third-party mandate, and that a mandate is not appropriate if the account holder is losing the ability to make relevant decisions themselves (OPG (PDF), checked 1 November 2026).
A mandate is a convenience on one account, granted by the bank, that depends on your parent’s capacity continuing. A registered power survives the loss of capacity, which is the whole point of it. Accepting a mandate as a substitute leaves the family back at the start on the day it stops working.
Keep the money separate, and keep records
The rule that protects you is the boring one. The Office of the Public Guardian advises that it is easier to keep the donor’s and your own money and property separate, unless you already have joint accounts or own a home together (OPG LP11, checked 1 November 2026).
Keep a simple running record: income in, bills out, anything unusual, and a note of why. Out-of-pocket expenses can be claimed where they are in proportion to the estate and to the duties you undertake, with phone calls, travel and postage given as examples, though travel for purely social visits is outside them (OPG, How to be a property and finances attorney (web version), checked 1 November 2026). Attorneys are accountable to the Office of the Public Guardian and can be asked to account for what they did, and the families who struggle are the ones reconstructing four years of transactions from memory. A cheap notebook is enough.
Bills, standing orders and care fees
Paying your parent’s existing commitments out of your parent’s own money is ordinary management, not a special step: the household bills, the utilities, the insurance and the care home invoice all sit squarely within a property and financial affairs power, and keeping them running is usually in their best interests under the Act’s own test.
Two habits prevent most problems. Keep the direct debits in your parent’s name on your parent’s account rather than moving them to yours, and where a bill is unusually large or new, write a line in your record saying what it was for. Care fees especially, because the local authority may later look at how the money was spent.
Gifts are the line people cross by accident
This is a limit attorneys can breach without realising it. The Act allows gifts on customary occasions to people related to or connected with the donor, provided the value of each gift is not unreasonable having regard to all the circumstances, and in particular the size of the donor’s estate (Mental Capacity Act 2005, section 12, checked 1 November 2026).
Anything beyond that needs the Court of Protection, including gifts intended to reduce Inheritance Tax. The Office of the Public Guardian is explicit that gifts must be reasonable, affordable and in the person’s best interests (OPG, Giving gifts (web version), checked 1 November 2026), and that your gift-making authority is limited even where the person seems to have capacity and has instructed you.
The pattern that gets attorneys investigated is familiar: moving money to the family early, to protect it from care fees or tax, with everyone’s informal agreement. See our page on an attorney’s limits and misuse for what happens when that unravels.
Joint accounts
A joint account is not automatically frozen when one holder loses capacity, though it can be restricted. The guidance says banks can decide whether or not to temporarily restrict the use of the account to essential transactions only, until a deputy has been appointed or a power of attorney registered (OPG (PDF), checked 1 November 2026).
Once a registered power is in place, normal service usually resumes. The guidance says the bank will allow the attorney and the account holder with capacity to operate the account independently, unless that account holder objects, in which case the account usually moves to a both-to-sign basis (OPG (PDF), checked 1 November 2026).
If a bank or a company will not accept it
A registered power is a legal grant of authority, and a firm that refuses one is making an operational decision rather than a legal one, with a complaints route behind it. See when a company will not accept a power of attorney for the order to escalate in and the time limits that apply.
Scotland runs a separate system through the Office of the Public Guardian (Scotland), with continuing and welfare powers rather than lasting powers, so the forms and the bank process differ (mygov.scot, Setting up power of attorney, checked 1 November 2026).