What we do and do not do

This page is deliberately blunt. Please read it before you pay us anything.

What we do

• We ask you structured questions and record your answers, saving them so you can return at any time.
• We test each person you name against the statutory eligibility rules — for example, whether an attorney is old enough, whether a bankrupt person can act on a property and financial affairs LPA, and whether a proposed certificate provider is disqualified by their relationship to you or where they live.
• We check any preferences or instructions you write against the patterns that commonly cause the Office of the Public Guardian to reject or sever wording.
• We cross-check every answer against every other answer for internal consistency before we produce anything.
• We produce the official Office of the Public Guardian forms, populated with your answers, in their own format.
• We give you a personalised signing pack setting out who signs what, in what order, and who must witness each signature, plus a checklist for sending it to the Office of the Public Guardian.

What we do not do

• We do not give legal advice. We will not tell you whom you should appoint, how many attorneys to have, whether they should act jointly or jointly and severally, or whether a particular restriction is wise for you. Those are legal judgements about your circumstances and they are outside what we do.
• We do not assess mental capacity. We ask you about it and we tell you when an assessment may be needed, but we cannot carry one out or certify it.
• We do not act as your certificate provider. The certificate provider must be someone who knows you well or a professional with the right skills, and they must be independent of us.
• We do not witness signatures and we cannot sign anything on the donor's behalf.
• We do not submit your application to the Office of the Public Guardian. You send the signed originals yourself, with the registration fee.
• We are not connected with the Office of the Public Guardian or GOV.UK. We are not endorsed by them and we do not act on their behalf.
• We do not prepare wills, trusts, deputyship applications, or Scottish or Northern Irish powers of attorney.

The free alternative

You can make a Lasting Power of Attorney yourself, for free, using the Office of the Public Guardian's own online service on GOV.UK. It has guidance and lets you save and return. You would still pay the same £92 registration fee. If you are confident handling the form and the rules on your own, that is a perfectly sensible route and we would rather you took it than paid us for something you do not need. What we sell is the checking layer, the controlled wording, and the signing pack.

When you should see a solicitor instead

Please take proper advice, and do not use this service, if any of the following apply:

• there is any real doubt about whether the donor understands the decision;
• anyone may be pressuring the donor;
• the donor cannot sign or make a mark themselves;
• the LPA needs to cover a business, a trust, or assets outside England and Wales;
• you want restrictions or conditions that go beyond the standard wording we offer;
• the family is in serious disagreement about the LPA.

Our free eligibility check asks about each of these and will tell you before you spend anything.

Limits of what we are responsible for

Our documents are produced from the information you give us. We cannot know whether a name, address or date of birth you have typed is correct, and we do not verify anyone's identity. If the Office of the Public Guardian rejects your application because of an error in what we produced from correct information, we will correct it and reproduce your documents at no charge. Our responsibility does not extend to the consequences of decisions you make about the content of your LPA. The full position is in our terms of service.