I don’t think this has been raised previously, but if it has I apologise.
Recently, I sent an LPA for property and financial affairs for registration, but unfortunately never noticed that at the foot of an attorney’s signature page the small lettering referred to an LPA for health and welfare. Only one page had this. The OPG rejected it and insisted on a new attorney page and the last page,section 15, being re-signed. As the text on the page, other than the small lettering, is identical to that on both types of LPA, it seems to me that the LPA should not be rejected but the LP1F changed to LP1H etc as it is the main text which matters but obviously I am carrying out the request of the OPG as it would be pointless arguing the point with them.
I think, in order to pre-empt any future questions from third parties as to the integrity of the LPA, it is appropriate for the OPG to insist on only the original form pages being used.
This is completely normal, they need to request a new section 11 on LP1F and the section 15 has to be the last thing signed which is why they request both.
However, if you have sent both LP1H and LP1F and have simply put these pages in the wrong LPA, if you call them they have just swapped them over for us before, no need for new pages to be signed.
I’m amazed that Michelle succeeded in getting the OPG to swap the pages! I’ll bear this in mind if we run into the same problem again as when it happened to us, they refused to do so.
This is an interesting and relevant thread. My apologies for hopping on this, but I have on my desk a Health & Welfare LPA which is already registered by the OPG but one page is by accident the page LP1F. The OPG have registered it without noticing or commenting on the error. I consider that a new application probably needs to be made for a new LPA HW to avoid any possible issues arising in the future.
As I said in my post, the text of The attorney pages is identical for both health and welfare and property and financial affairs LPA’s. The only difference is what is in small print in the bottom right hand corner of these pages. I don’t know if it has ever been tested but if for example a financial institution rejected the LPA because of this minor error, I would certainly advise the attorneys to resist this particularly as the donor would by then have lost capacity. I can’t believe that a judge would order that the LPA was defective just because of this. The OPG needs to reconsider its approach.
The wording on the attorney pages is slightly different for each LPA. On the property and finance LPA one of the bullet points states that the attorney is confirming that they can only act when the LPA is registered and at the time indicated by section 5 of the LPA. On the health and welfare LPA the same bullet points states that the attorney confirms they can only act when the donor lacks capacity.