Dementia and Power of Attorney: What You Must Know

Dementia and the LPA: the one fact that governs everything

An LPA can only be made by someone who still has the mental capacity to understand it. Dementia, left long enough, takes that capacity away. Put those two sentences together and you have the whole urgency of this subject: the document that protects a person with dementia can only be signed while they can still understand it.

There are no exceptions and no retrospective fixes. If you are reading this because a parent has just been diagnosed, the kindest thing you can do is act soon, while the choice is still theirs to make.

A diagnosis is not the same as lost capacity

This surprises many families: a dementia diagnosis does not automatically mean a person cannot make an LPA. Capacity is decision-specific and assessed at the time the decision is made. In the early stages, many people can still fully understand what an LPA is, choose their attorneys, and decide what they would want. An LPA made in that window is every bit as valid as one made twenty years earlier.

What the person must be able to understand, at the time of signing:

What an LPA is and what it does
That they are giving their attorneys authority to act for them
That their attorneys must act in their best interests
That they can cancel it while they still have capacity

If there is doubt, a doctor's opinion at the time of signing is valuable evidence that the LPA was validly made, and it protects the LPA against challenges later. The certificate provider plays the same role: for a donor with early dementia, a GP or another professional is often the sensible choice. How certificate providers work.

What happens if the window closes

Once capacity is gone and there is no LPA, nobody has automatic authority: not a spouse, not children. Bank accounts, including joint ones, can be frozen. The house cannot be sold to fund care. Doctors will decide treatment without a legal voice for the family.

The only remaining route is a deputyship through the Court of Protection: months of waiting, court fees and usually solicitor fees running into thousands of pounds, annual supervision for as long as it lasts, and a judge deciding who acts. Families walk this road every week because a form was not signed in time. What life without an LPA looks like in practice.

Talking to a parent about it

Most delays are not legal. They are conversational. Nobody wants to raise it. Two things that help:

Make it about their control, not yours. An LPA is how they stay in charge of who acts for them. The alternative hands that decision to a court. Framed that way, most parents want the form.

Do yours at the same time. "I'm sorting mine — shall we do them together?" removes the sting entirely, and it is honest: every adult should have one. Our guide to that conversation goes deeper.

What to put in a dementia-aware LPA

Both types matter here, and the health and welfare LPA carries particular weight: care home choices, daily care, and life-sustaining treatment decisions all fall to attorneys when the time comes. The preferences box is genuinely useful for dementia planning — short, plain statements like "I would like to stay in my own home for as long as it is safe" or "quality of life matters more to me than length of life" guide attorneys through decisions you will not be able to weigh in on.

Choose attorneys who can advocate with banks, care providers and the NHS, possibly for years. And name replacements: dementia care is a long road, and the LPA needs to outlast it.

Doing it now, gently and properly

Making the LPAs is free, and it takes about fifteen minutes of plain-English questions. Then a qualified estate planner rings and goes through every answer before anything is signed. For a family navigating early dementia, that is also a calm second pair of eyes on whether everything is in order. If capacity is borderline, we will say so honestly, because an LPA that gets challenged helps nobody.

The window for this document closes silently. While it is open, it is fifteen minutes and a phone call.

Common questions

Can someone with dementia make a power of attorney?

Often, yes. Capacity is judged at the time of signing, decision by decision. In the early stages many people fully understand what an LPA is and can validly make one. Once the condition has progressed past that point, no LPA can be made and the only route is the Court of Protection.

How is capacity to make an LPA assessed?

The person must understand what an LPA is, that it gives their attorneys authority, that attorneys must act in their best interests, and that it can be cancelled while capacity remains. Where there is doubt, a doctor’s opinion at signing provides strong evidence the LPA was validly made.

What happens to someone with dementia who has no LPA?

When capacity goes, nobody has automatic authority — not a spouse, not children. Accounts can freeze and treatment decisions pass to doctors. The family must apply to the Court of Protection for a deputyship, which takes months, costs thousands, and puts the decision in a judge’s hands.

Should a person with early dementia use a professional certificate provider?

It is often wise. A GP or other professional acting as certificate provider adds weight to the LPA’s validity, which matters if anyone later questions whether the donor understood what they signed.