Sir, – I could not help but smile while reading Dominic Coyle’s answer relating to enduring powers of attorney (“Can I sidestep pesky and expensive legal bills on enduring power of attorney?”, Your Money, June 28th).
In describing the new process of registering enduring powers of attorney (EPA) as “slightly clunkier” and of calling it user friendly as “a bit of a stretch” he was being charitable to the Decision Support Service (DSS).
My experience of attempting to register would certainly justify his descriptions of the system. Last year my wife and I decided that we should both execute EPAs appointing each other as our respective attorneys. To cover all possible scenarios, we also decided to appoint two of our sons as alternative attorneys. Our first problem was finding a solicitor who was prepared to advise us. Apparently most solicitors are refusing to engage in the system. Eventually, we found a solicitor in a nearby town willing to advise us.
Having successfully downloaded the array of forms to be completed, we arranged a meeting with all involved, four prospective attorneys and witnesses, to complete and sign the various declarations. These (32 pages) had to be scanned into our computer, which we then submitted by email to the DSS and breathed a sigh of relief at, we thought, a job well done.
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Imagine our dismay when six months later we received notifications from the DSS that our forms had not been completed correctly. Apparently, although all signatures had been witnessed by two witnesses, they were not acceptable as all the forms were not witnessed by the same persons. We used different witnesses as we wanted to involve all our family members in the process.
We have now been asked to submit fresh forms, effectively having to go through the whole process again. In addition, we will each be required to submit fresh Certificates of Competency, the original of which I was charged €150 for by my GP and is now considered out of date with no consideration of the fact that it took the DSS six months to examine our applications. One could be forgiven for thinking that being able to complete the process to the satisfaction of the DSS would of itself be ample evidence of competency.
We remain hopeful that we will eventually succeed in registering our EPAs before they are ever called upon to be invoked.
– Yours, etc,
JOHN GILLEN,
Skerries,
Co Dublin.
