Need help? Call 0345 838 4074 Register Login

Wills and powers of attorney

When couples decide to cohabit it is sensible for both parties to make new wills to reflect their new circumstances. Additionally, if one of the parties is elderly or has a serious health condition it may be appropriate to create a power of attorney to enable your cohabitee to act on your behalf. This could include withdrawing money from an account to pay a bill or selling an asset. It might also include taking care of matters related to your personal welfare, such as taking care of your social and healthcare needs.

Making a Will

Making a Will is important for everyone but even more so for unmarried couples. Unmarried couples should consider making a Will in favour of their partner. If they don't, their estate will pass to their immediate family or in some cases to the Government, under the intestacy rules and not to their partner. This might leave the surviving partner with serious financial problems.

An unmarried partner will also not be entitled to administer their deceased partner's estate as they were not legally related. This right must be specifically provided for in the Will.

A Will is also important for appointing a guardian for any children you may have, at the time of your death, who are under the age of 18 (or 16 in Scotland).

Powers of attorney

At any stage in life people can become unable to manage their own affairs for a variety of reasons. They may be incapacitated by an accident, ill-health or the onset of mental illness. This makes the paying of bills, the managing of financial decisions and other important everyday routines difficult and in some cases impossible. It is therefore important to consider appointing an attorney to act under a power of attorney before this happens.

A power of attorney can give your partner the legal right to manage your affairs, if you should become unable to manage them yourself or to communicate your wishes.

Why is a power of attorney useful?

A power of attorney can be used to give another person the right to manage either or both your financial affairs and your personal welfare, in the event that you should become unable to manage it yourself. A power of attorney can also be used to give another person the right to deal with your property for a limited period of time.

It is worth planning ahead, because once you become unable to manage you affairs due to mental incapacity, you will no longer be able to grant a valid power of attorney. It therefore makes both practical and financial sense to consider appointing an attorney under a power of attorney before that day arrives.

What power of attorney do I need?

There are different types of power of attorney available. The choice of power of attorney will depend on where you want the power of attorney to be valid and for what purposes you want to use it.

What is the law guide

The Desktop Lawyer law guide aims to present the law to you in a comprehensive yet jargon-free and easy-to-read format. Our law guide is constantly kept up to date with changes in business and family law by our team of in house solicitors, and includes information across all the legal jurisdictions in the UK.

Our law guide is free to use. Where we provide documents related to this area of law, or where they may help you with any legal issue in this area, they will be listed to the right of this message.

Our use of cookies

We use necessary cookies to make our site work. We would also like to set some optional cookies. We won't set these optional cookies unless you enable them. Please choose whether this site may use optional cookies by selecting 'On' or 'Off' for each category below. Using this tool will set a cookie on your device to remember your preferences.

For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our Cookie notice.

Necessary cookies

Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

Functionality cookies

We'd like to set cookies to provide you with a better customer experience. For more information on these cookies, please see our cookie notice.