LPA for a husband or wife
Being married gives you no legal authority over your spouse's money or medical treatment. Banks can freeze sole accounts and hospitals are not obliged to take your instructions. Each spouse needs their own LPA naming the other.
Make your LPA online for £49
Answer simple questions. We prepare your LPA documents from your answers, ready for the next steps.
- £49 per LPA, or £79 for both types
- No solicitor required for straightforward LPAs
- Plain English questions, one screen at a time
- Save your progress and come back to it
- Checked for common completion errors as you go
- Review everything before you pay
The Office of the Public Guardian charges a separate £92 to register each LPA.
What marriage does not give you
- No right to operate your spouse's sole bank account or ISA.
- No right to deal with a property in their sole name.
- No right to consent to or refuse treatment on their behalf.
- No automatic right to be consulted about a move into care.
- "Next of kin" has no legal standing for these decisions at all.
What to do instead
Each spouse makes their own LPA appointing the other, usually with an adult child as replacement attorney in case both are affected at once. Two people making both types is four documents in total.
The sole-account trap
The most common surprise is discovering, at exactly the wrong moment, that a spouse cannot act. A husband whose wife holds the family's savings in her own name cannot move money to pay for care once she loses capacity — the bank needs a registered LPA or a deputyship order, and neither can be produced on the day it is needed.
The same applies to a house held in one name only: a sale or remortgage to release funds for care fees cannot go ahead without the owner's consent or a court order once they can no longer consent themselves.
A worked example
Grace and Peter had been married for 30 years. Peter's pension and most of their savings were in his sole name. When Peter had a stroke, Grace could not access the accounts to pay the mortgage without applying for deputyship — a process that took nine months. They had assumed marriage was enough; it was not. Their daughter later helped their remaining unaffected relative make an LPA the same week, to avoid the same problem happening twice.
Common questions
We have a joint account. Does that cover us?
Not fully. A joint account may keep working day to day, but the bank can restrict it once it knows a holder lacks capacity, and it gives no authority over a pension, an ISA, investments, or a property held in one name only.
What is the trap people fall into?
Assuming that being married means you can already deal with a sole account or sell the family home if it is in your spouse's sole name. Neither is true. A sale of solely-owned property while the owner lacks capacity and has no LPA needs a Court of Protection order.
What does it cost for both of us to do both types?
£79 each to us, so £158 for the couple, plus £92 per document to the OPG — four documents at £92 is £368, making £526 in total.
Read next
Where this fits
This page is part of Parents, couples and capacity. The pages below take it further.
- Make an LPA online
The whole journey end to end: questions, documents, signing and registration.
- What an LPA costs in 2026
Our £49 and £79 prices, the £92 OPG registration fee, and solicitor comparisons.
Helping a parent or partner?
They make the decisions and sign, you can do all the paperwork. Start with the free capacity check.
The Office of the Public Guardian charges a separate £92 to register each LPA.
This is general information about Lasting Powers of Attorney in England and Wales. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice about your situation. What we do and do not do.