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LPA fee increase 2025

MoJ announces proposed LPA fee increase from November 2025

MOJ announcement on LPA fees

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has announced that the lasting power of attorney (LPA) application fees will increase from £82 to £92, pending Parliamentary approval. The new fee will apply to applications received by the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) from 17 November 2025. This adjustment aims to better align application income with costs associated with OPG service delivery. Fee exemptions and reductions will continue to be available depending on applicants’ financial circumstances, in accordance with His Majesty’s Treasury guidance on Managing Public Money.

This opportunity comes once in a lifetime

Daily writing prompt
If you had the power to change one law, what would it be and why?
View all responses

Gravity. I think it would be fun if this was optional and/or discretionary… Imagine the fun you could have…

Seriously though – in England the laws can be changed – by parliament. If you want to change the law you need to get elected, or to thoroughly persuade those who are elected. You might decide to stand as a politician or local councillor.

Protesting in the streets doesn’t seem to have much effect on policy in England – it didn’t stop the poll tax, it didn’t stop Brexit. You may get further if you have serious amounts of money – even politicians are swayed by powerful people – but the direct route of being elected is usually considered less controversial than buying your way to a law change…

Why not look at laws as being the written rules, that might need changing from time to time, and really examine if they are fit for purpose? Examine the way those laws have been interpreted, when the situation is not clear – and how lawyers have understood the words used in the laws. Unlike scientific laws, the ways we choose to codify our lives as a society can be changed.

Or else the beat goes on…

Why should you make Lasting Powers of Attorney and pay all that money to a solicitor?

On being asked by a colleague why (entre nous) it would be a
good idea to get some expert advice on making LPAs as opposed to just downloading the forms from the internet… 
Are legal fees worth paying, as opposed to doing it yourself?

Well, certainly the forms are available online.  And there is good advice in the explanatory leaflet. You still have to pay for the registration fees.

But that’s as far as it goes in terms of legal advice – and if you want to consider a scenario which is not covered by the advice – or the phrasing of it means you don’t understand, there is not really much of a substitute for being able to ask someone who knows what they are talking about and can answer.  That’s the real reason why you pay a lawyer – to tell you the trips and pitfalls, and to answer tricky scenarios, if you think there might be one for you.  To make sure you really know what you are signing, especially when it is a powerful document.  Sometimes words used in legal documents already have a specifically understood meaning (rather than the basic meaning of ordinary words).  Sometimes phrases like “appropriate investment advice” covers a wide range of what has been considered to be appropriate in different circumstances. 

In addition, if you think it might be a good idea to restrict the powers that you give to attorneys, you might actually be making matters far worse – your wording may in time come to be very restrictive.

If there is, later on, any question about whether you understood what the power was – either given or received – then you may have had a good start if you saw a solicitor who explained it to you, or who gave you some tips and notes for future reference.

Lets be honest, the law applies to all, and breaking it is a possibility – finding ways round scenarios and using the Ways and Means Act – all of those things are what people do in real life – but there has to be a point at which the buck stops – and that is on the written word of the law, and of the power given.   Because human beings are imaginative, there is always the opportunity for a new situation to come up which no one ever thought was an issue.  So the law moves on, shading ever closer to the “real” meaning of a law.   If the sea is blue, then it is cerulean blue, deep blue, wine-dark, green, grey, flecked with white or a certain shade as defined by Pantone?  And which sea?  The sea I view from my window, or yours? the sea in summer, at Margate, or at Whitby?

PSA: Solicitors charge for what they do

Anecdotal evidence recently exchanged around the office appears to show that solicitors are expected to:

  1. When acting as executors, even after the end of the administration, maintain the grave of the deceased at no cost to the estate, as a matter of course;
  2. Provide initial free advice as a “statutory free half hour” on any topic;
  3. During such initial advice, complete IHT400 forms – for no fee;
  4. Give tax advice in relation to estates for no fee, when such estates would normally attract a significant Inheritance Tax liability;
  5. Travel to see a client residing more than fifteen minutes drive away at no additional fee, at a time convenient to a client;
  6. Provide copies of entire files for no fee;
  7. Answer questions relating to the preparation of a will for no fee.

I really don’t understand – you don’t expect your hairdresser to cut your hair for free – or a plumber to come out and look at your boiler and not charge for their time. You don’t roll up at the airport, board a plane and then fly to New York for no money or expect that a return flight is automatically included because you purchased an outward bound ticket. You regularly pay for your car to be serviced and have new tyres, but expect a will to be an unusual and unnecessary expense, and the advice connected with it to be worthless.

I appreciate lawyers are “lefty” when they do their job for people whom the last government disliked, or amongst the lowest of the law (the aforementioned government/parliament, estate agents etc) but we seem to be asked to do so much, compared to other professions, and to be vilified in the same breath, all for free…

Word of the Day: Fungible

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fungible

Nothing to do with mushrooms (or badgers or snakes). And also nothing to do with a Runcible Spoon. Of course, a runcible spoon could be fungible, providing it is identical to another. Highly unlikely really, as there is argument that money itself is not totally fungible Re London Wine Co (Shippers) Ltd [1986] and principles considered later in https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/docs/uksc-2010-0194-judgment.pdf

fungible

adjectivefun·​gi·​ble | \ ˈfən-jə-bəl  \

Definition of fungible

 (Entry 1 of 2)1: being something (such as money or a commodity) of such a nature that one part or quantity may be replaced by another equal part or quantity in paying a debt or settling an accountOil, wheat, and lumber are fungible commodities.fungible goods2: capable of mutual substitution : INTERCHANGEABLE… the court’s postulate that male and female jurors must be regarded as fungible— George Will3: readily changeable to adapt to new situations : FLEXIBLEManagers typically use more than a hundred different lineups over the course of the season. Batting orders are so fungible that few players last long in one spot.— Tom Verducci

fungiblenoun

Definition of fungible (Entry 2 of 2): something that is fungible (see FUNGIBLE entry 1 sense 1) : a good one part or quantity of which can be substituted for another of equal value in satisfying an obligation —usually used in pluralFungibles may be valued by weight or measure.

Unsent text accepted as dead man’s will by Australian court – BBC News

Source: Unsent text accepted as dead man’s will by Australian court – BBC News

 

I fervently hope that this is not going to be taken up by the British Courts following the Law Commission consultation.

The potential consequences:

Is a written will superceded by a text message, a facebook message etc, where there is no evidence that it was seen by another?

If an executor cannot unlock a phone, can they be responsible for administering according to the will or intestacy provisions – just in case there is an unsent message?

An unsent message is a draft communication – everyone has thoughts that they have not said, or words they have not committed to, finally – where is the line to be drawn?

Who ensures that the deceased actually made the text message themselves, or even had the relevant mental understanding to make a will.

Its not April Fool’s day, is it?

Families are warned about the Budget stealth tax | Daily Mail Online

Source: Families are warned about the Budget stealth tax | Daily Mail Online

 

I am not a Daily Mail reader, as a general rule – nor a supporter of Rees-Mogg.

 

But the new probate fees will cost many ordinary people a lot of hurt, and I think they are just not aware of the changes.  The consultation on the rise in fees was met with an overwhelming about of negative feedback, but was totally ignored.

The statement that there will be many estates lifted out of the need for getting a grant of probate by this measure verges on the disingenuous – most estates with a value of less than £50,000 do not pay for a grant of probate: in most cases, banks and building societies are prepared to give money to the executors of an estate with almost distressingly little checking – it seems easier to get money out of an account for a deceased person than it is to register a power of attorney.

The problem is that it affects people who would not have expected to pay inheritance tax, and who might have simple wills or not even thought about their wills for a long time – those people leaving everything to their spouse, or to charity, on the basis that there was no tax to pay so there was no need to do anything really.  The introduction of the Transferrable Nil Rate Band and the Transferrable Residential Nil Rate Band have done a lot to perpetuate this theory – that unless you have over £650,000 (or now on a sliding scale up to £1 million for deaths occurring in 2020 onwards) you can leave all you have to a spouse with no worries.

But not now – not only do the smallest estates pay almost double the original fee of £155 (starting at £300), but those “ordinary families” with houses and a few savings (coming to, say £550K, will be caught.

Woe betide those who have no cash, but everything in investments.  Or those with most of the money tied up in the farm or in a business when they die – somehow, money has to be found.  The maximum fee of £20,000 just for assets to pass between spouses is eyewatering, to say the least.

There’s a petition, and of course, you can write to your MP to protest – unless there is a protest of some description, these fees will come in from as early as 1 May.  To say that everyone is on hold to the Inland Revenue to get their forms pushed through ASAP is an understatement – the probate registry has sent out three information notices already on the subject to the tune of “don’t panic Mr Mannering!”

Day -v- Harris [2013], Curnock v IRC, Phizackerley

Just a quick reminder to myself that these are the current cases concerned the ability of attorneys to make valid gifts, and the interaction with IHT.

Day -v- Harris 2013 Day v Harris and others Same v Royal College of Music and another (Arnold and another, interpleader claimants) [2013] EWCA Civ 191; [2013] WLR (D) 112 and PDF of judgment concerns a registered EPA – and gifts made by the attorney (who was also a joint holder of a bank account) and whether the gifts that he had made were as attorney for the donor, or in another capacity as being access to the joint bank account as was his right as a joint bank account signatory

In my judgment, it remained open to Mr Day to operate the bank account after registration of the EPA as he had done before such registration. He could not use it to benefit himself without the full, free and informed consent of Sir Malcolm but, if he had that consent, as the judge held he did, gifts made by drawing cheques on the joint account were not invalidated by the effect of section 7(1)(c) of the Act even though made after registration of the EPA.

Had the gifts not been validly made, then they were still part of the donor’s estate for IHT purposes – on the basis of Curnock v IRC, Curnock v IRC [2003] SWTI 1053 where a cheque was not encashed prior to the death of the donor – and therefore the gift was not complete by the time of death.  This could also be seen in conjunction with Phizackerley, Personal Representatives of Phizackerley v HMRC [2007] SpC 591

An earlier version of Day -v- Harris, in 2010 concerned the nature of the accounting to be made for the researches of the executor into the amount of the gifts that were made and how far back the executor should go in attempting to ascertain what gifts had been made, and whether the expenses of the executor in doing so were reasonable.