Property vs Health & Welfare LPA — which do you actually need?

Two different Lasting Powers of Attorney do two completely different jobs — and choosing only one leaves half your life unprotected. Here is the difference in plain English, and the gap families fall into when they stop at one.

Property & Financial Affairs: the money side

This LPA covers banking, bills, pensions, tax, and maintaining or selling your home. One useful detail people miss: you choose when it can be used. It can operate only if you lose capacity — or, if you prefer, while you still have capacity but with your consent, which is genuinely handy if getting to the bank becomes the practical problem long before capacity does.

Health & Welfare: the people side

This one covers where you live, your daily care, medical treatment — and, only if you expressly tick the option, decisions about life-sustaining treatment. Unlike the financial LPA, it can only ever be used once you have lost capacity. Until then, every welfare decision remains entirely yours.

You can shape both around your family

• Different attorneys for each — the financially sensible child for the money, the compassionate one for the care.
• Jointly or jointly and severally — must they act together on everything, or can any one act alone? (Most choose jointly and severally for practicality, sometimes with key decisions reserved.)
• Replacement attorneys — a plan B if an attorney dies or can no longer act.

These small structural choices matter enormously in practice — they are much of what proper advice adds over a form-filling exercise.

The gap people fall into

A common pattern: the family holds the Property & Financial LPA, so the bills get paid — but no Health & Welfare LPA was ever made. Then the care-home question arrives, and the decision sits with professionals and process rather than with the people who actually know you.

The practical answer

For most people: both, made together — one process, one registration wait (currently around 20 weeks with the Office of the Public Guardian, £92 per LPA), and usually a better combined fee. Doing one and “getting round to” the other is precisely how the gap happens.