With so many
cut price unqualified outfits now offering “legal services” it’s surprising
that real solicitors can keep going if they don’t know what they are doing. Somehow,
some do. We had a cracking example last
month.
A local lady
got in touch with us to explain that mother was appointing her attorney within
an LPA and she needed to make an appointment with a solicitor to witness her
signature and certify her identity.
We are used
to people contacting us about the ‘need for a solicitor to witness their
signature’. The actual requirement can
be for one of a number of things from detailed advice on a guarantee liability
or occupiers rights to a simple oath or statutory declaration.
Sometimes
it’s just the witnessing of well, the signature of an attorney on an LPA. That can of course be anybody other than the
donor or an attorney. It doesn’t need a
solicitor.
Nor, as far
as I and two of my better qualified colleagues are aware, is there any need at
all for the witness – solicitor or otherwise – to obtain and certify
identification of the signatory.
So, we were
curious, and asked to see a copy of the letter from mother’s solicitor….
Sure enough,
it stipulated that a solicitor would need to complete an ID1 which, for those
who aren’t familiar with it, is a standard form of identification questionnaire
typically used in connection with land registration applications and which
requires amongst other things a certified photograph to be attached.
The point is,
it’s not a two-minute job and even with the various elements divided
efficiently between support staff and lawyer, it’s a time-consuming task for
which we like others generally charge a few quid.
In this case,
we haven’t charged anything for
explaining to the local lady that she doesn’t need to come and spend money with
us going through all this rigmarole. She doesn’t need us to witness her
signature either.
What she does need to do is ask the solicitors
acting for her mother to also review their requirements for signature of the
LPA…
Inspection of
their letter and enclosure reveals that only one page of the LPA has been sent
to the attorney. It’s not difficult to
see why this poses a problem. All one has to do is read that page of the
document and the bold statement above the signature boxes which declares that:
By signing this section I
understand and confirm all of the following:-
…
I have read
this lasting power of attorney (LPA) including section 8 ‘your legal rights and
responsibilities’, or I have had it read to me.
Well, as far
as we know, the document has not been read over the telephone to our local lady
and why would it be, when one can do as we do and post the entire LPA to the
person who needs to read it and then sign – after
the donor and the certificate provider have signed, not before.
There may be
a further clue in the requirement that our lady should sign but “please ensure
that the form is not dated”.
I have seen
this done a few times, too. The
inference always to be drawn is that the signatures may not happen in any
particular order but if all the dates are left blank then those can be filled
in afterwards, to ensure an appearance of compliance.
Compliance in
that respect is important. There’s a
strict sequence set out in regulation 9 of the LPA Regulations 2007. A letter
such as the one we saw will cast doubt on the validity of the LPA, probably
when it’s too late to fix the problem.
So, as they
say in our beloved Eurovision, it’s nul
points for this bunch of ‘experts’.
They probably deserve to be named but I am not that unkind. Just be on your guard if you are in the South
Bucks area.
Simple stuff,
badly done.
