“Some years ago, I prepared a Will, and Property & Affairs and Health & Welfare Lasting Power of Attorney documents for a lovely lady, a widow, who wanted to get her affairs in order “just in case”.
Recently I received a phone call from my client’s very distressed son. His mum has been diagnosed with advanced dementia and was moving into permanent care. The son was finding this very difficult to cope with and to add to his anguish he’d been turned away by the bank when trying to register the Property & Financial Affairs LPA with them. It transpired that he’d just taken in the OPG letter which stated that the LPA had been registered some years before.
I checked our records and discovered that we had, as instructed, despatched the registered LPA documents to his mother by registered post and she had signed a receipt for the documents, but wanted to keep them herself, and had declined the option of secure storage.
The son then turned the house upside down, but could not find any trace of the registered Lasting Power of Attorney documents and assumes that his mother simply threw them away during the early stages of her dementia. We were of course able to apply to the OPG for duplicate documents but the delay and missing paperwork caused a lot of unnecessary anxiety.
There is no sign of the Will either. The family now of course wish they had encouraged their mother to pay for secure storage, or had paid for it themselves!
In every case, we offer our clients secure storage with NWS to prevent just such problems, to avoid the worry that sensitive and important documents can get either lost, damaged, or fall into the wrong hands.”
Eleanor – Think Wills & Probate
