LPA Certificate Provider: Who Qualifies & What They Do

What a certificate provider is for

Every LPA has a section that must be signed by a certificate provider: an independent person who confirms that you understand what you are signing, that you are doing it freely, and that nobody is pressuring you. The role exists to protect you. Without a valid certificate, the OPG cannot register the LPA.

The rules about who can sign are strict, and choosing the wrong person is one of the common reasons applications fail.

Who qualifies

There are two routes.

Someone who has known you for two years

A friend, a neighbour, a colleague or former colleague: anyone who has known you personally for at least two years and can judge that you understand what the LPA does. This is the route most people use, and it costs nothing.

A relevant professional

A solicitor or barrister, a doctor, a registered nurse, a social worker, or another registered professional with the skills to assess your understanding. A professional does not need to have known you for any length of time. Some charge for the service. GP surgeries in particular often do, or decline altogether, so check before you rely on your doctor.

Who is ruled out

This list matters more than the last one, because it catches the people you would naturally think of first:

• Any family member of yours
• Any family member of an attorney
• Anyone named as an attorney or replacement attorney on the LPA
• An attorney's business partner or employee
• The owner, manager or an employee of a care home you live in

Your husband cannot sign. Your daughter cannot sign. The son-in-law you named as attorney certainly cannot sign. Independence is the whole point of the role.

What they actually do

The certificate provider should talk to you about the LPA, ideally alone, without your attorneys in the room. They check that you know what the document is, what your attorneys will be able to do, and that the choice is yours. Then they sign their section, after you have signed yours and before any attorney signs. The conversation does not need to be formal. It needs to be real: a certificate provider who signs without discussing anything is not doing the job, and can be held accountable for that.

If you have someone — ask them

Here is the honest advice: if there is anyone in your life who has known you two years and is not family or an attorney, ask them. It takes them ten minutes, it costs you nothing, and it is exactly what the system was designed for. You do not need to pay anyone for this.

If you genuinely have no one

Some people get to this section and find every candidate is ruled out: family everywhere, attorneys everywhere else, and no one independent who has known them long enough. It happens more often than you would think, particularly for people who have moved recently or become isolated.

If that is you, we can arrange a certificate provider. Make your LPA free, and when your estate planner rings to check your answers, tell them you have nobody for the certificate. They will explain how it works and what it costs. Do not let this one section stop you making an LPA at all. That is the worst outcome on the table.

For the rest of the process, here is how making an LPA works from start to finish.