If you or your parents made a power of attorney before October 2007, it is an enduring power of attorney, an EPA. Millions were made and millions still sit in drawers and deed boxes, perfectly legal and quietly incomplete. Since 1 October 2007 no new EPA can be created; the lasting power of attorney replaced it. Whether an old EPA is still enough is a question worth answering before anyone needs it.
Is an old EPA still valid?
Yes. An EPA validly made and signed before 1 October 2007 still works. Nothing forces anyone to replace one, and an EPA that suits the family can serve to the end. The question is not validity. It is coverage and mechanics, where the two documents differ sharply.
The differences that matter
- Scope: an EPA covers property and financial affairs only. It gives attorneys no say in medical treatment, care decisions or where you live. There was never a health version of an EPA.
- When it is registered: an LPA is registered with the Office of the Public Guardian up front, before use. An EPA works unregistered while you have capacity, but must be registered at the moment you start losing it, by law, with notice given to at least three of your relatives, at the worst possible time for paperwork.
- Safeguards: LPAs added a certificate provider confirming you understood the document and were not pressured, plus optional people to notify. EPAs predate all of that.
- Replacements: an LPA can name replacement attorneys. An EPA cannot, so if its attorney dies or loses capacity first, the document can simply fail.
The registration trap in practice
The EPA’s register-when-capacity-fades design is its real weakness. Registration takes weeks, involves formal notice to family members (any of whom can object), and lands on the attorney precisely when they are also dealing with a parent’s decline. Families who assumed the EPA was ready to use discover it is a starting pistol, not a key. An LPA, registered years earlier in calm circumstances, simply works on the day it is needed.
What to do with an EPA today
- At minimum, make a health and welfare LPA alongside it: the EPA leaves every care and medical decision uncovered, and no old document can fill that gap
- Check the attorneys: if any have died, moved away or aged out of the role, the EPA may be a dead letter; only a new LPA can name replacements
- Consider replacing it entirely with a property and financial affairs LPA registered now, so nothing waits on paperwork in a crisis
- If capacity is already failing, take advice quickly: the EPA must be registered now, and if there is no valid power at all the alternative is a Court of Protection deputyship, slower and far more expensive
Bringing it up to date
Replacing or supplementing an EPA is not disloyalty to the person who made it; it is finishing the job with better tools. Willful prepares both types of LPA for £99 each, solicitor-reviewed, with the registration paperwork prepared for you. Doing it now, while capacity is not in question, is the entire point.