How many attorneys should I appoint?

The trade-off

What to think about

• Proximity — someone who can get to the bank, the house or the hospital.
• Competence — for finances, the person who is good with money, not the eldest by default.
• Relationships — appointing all four children equally often creates deadlock, not fairness.
• Age and health — a spouse alone is fragile cover; add a replacement.

You can split the roles

Your financial LPA and your health and welfare LPA are separate documents, so you can appoint different people to each — the financially confident child for money, the nearby one for care. See the difference between the two types.

A worked example

Harold, a widower with three children, is deciding how many attorneys to appoint. His eldest son lives abroad and is not confident with paperwork; his daughter Claire is an accountant who lives twenty minutes away; his youngest son works away for weeks at a time. Harold appoints Claire and his youngest son jointly and severally for finances, so Claire can act alone when needed, and names his eldest son as a replacement attorney rather than leaving him out altogether — recognising his involvement without slowing down everyday decisions.

Families with more than two children

What banks and other organisations prefer

Banks are used to dealing with a single attorney presenting the LPA at a branch, so a jointly and severally appointment tends to move faster whatever the number of attorneys named, because any one of them can act without producing evidence that the others agree. If you appoint attorneys jointly, every instruction — closing an account, arranging a mortgage, selling a property — needs all of them to sign, which slows things down in proportion to how many people you have named. This is one reason the number of attorneys and the decision-making basis matter together, not separately.

It is also worth thinking about what happens if attorneys disagree in practice, not just on paper. Two attorneys who see each other regularly and get on well can resolve most disagreements informally. Three or four attorneys spread across the country, some of whom barely speak, are far more likely to end up stuck — and a stuck LPA is often less use than none at all, because the family may still have to go to the Court of Protection to resolve the deadlock.

A second worked example

Priya is a widow with two children who do not get on: her son Vikram and her daughter Anjali. Appointing them jointly and severally worries her, because either could act alone and Anjali has told her she would not trust Vikram to consult her first. Priya considers appointing them jointly instead, so nothing happens without both of them agreeing, but recognises this risks total deadlock if they fall out over a decision. In the end she appoints Anjali as sole attorney, with Vikram named as replacement attorney, and writes a short letter of wishes explaining her reasoning to both of them so neither feels blindsided later.

Common questions

Read next

• Jointly or jointly and severally: which should you choose?
• Replacement attorneys on an LPA