Paying your attorneys and family carers

Your attorneys are not paid for their time unless your LPA says so. If you want them paid, that has to be written into your LPA as an instruction. Paying a relative for caring for you is a separate question, and the one that caused the family dispute in Rogers v Wills.

This guide is one of a series on the preferences and instructions our LPAs offer.

The clause: an annual fee for your attorneys

What it does. Each of your attorneys is paid a fixed fee once a year, in December. You choose the amount. You also choose a level below which the payments stop, so the fees never eat into money you need for yourself. The clause is available in both types of LPA.

Why it helps.

• It settles the question in advance. Nobody has to guess what you would have wanted, or ask the rest of the family to agree.
• It recognises real work. Being an attorney can mean years of paperwork, phone calls, bank visits and care meetings.
• It protects your money. The fee is fixed, and it stops if your savings fall below your chosen level.
• It protects your attorneys. A payment the LPA allows is easy to explain. One it does not mention can look like taking money that is not theirs.

What the official guidance says

The Office of the Public Guardian’s guide is clear: If you agree to pay a fee, you must write this in your instructions. If you don’t, your attorney can’t be paid. Without it, attorneys can still claim reasonable expenses, such as postage, travel costs and the cost of an accountant, but nothing for their time.

This is one of the few wishes that must be an instruction rather than a preference. The guide’s own example of a fee instruction is a single fee each year, paid in December. Our clause follows that model and adds the lower limit.

Without this clause

• An attorney who does all the work cannot be paid for it, however many years it takes.
• One brother or sister may do the work while the others share the inheritance equally. That can breed resentment.
• An attorney who pays themselves anyway is acting outside their authority. Other relatives can complain to the Office of the Public Guardian, the bank or the police.

Paying a family member for caring for you is different

The fee clause pays your attorneys for acting as your attorneys. It does not deal with paying someone for looking after you day to day.

Paying for your own care is normally fine. The Office of the Public Guardian says a financial attorney will usually have authority to make payments to a third-party providing care for the donor. The difficulty comes when the carer is also your attorney. Its guidance says that where the attorney is also the person providing care a conflict of interest arises as attorneys are not allowed to take advantage of their position. Where this occurs, the attorney will be required to apply to the Court of Protection for authorisation.

So if a relative will care for you, the best protection is a written care agreement, made while you have capacity, saying what they will do and what they will be paid. Your LPA can then record your wishes about your care and how it is paid for. A solicitor can check that the two fit together.

What happened in Rogers v Wills

In 2017 Sheila Wills was 90, living alone in Norfolk and becoming forgetful. She did not want live-in carers. She went to live with her daughter, Bern Rogers, in Bristol. The judge found that Sheila insisted Bern be paid properly for looking after her, and Bern agreed. There was no discussion as to the amount that would be paid [38].

Sheila made LPAs in February 2018, appointing Bern and her son Andrew to act jointly [44]. Nothing in the judgments suggests they said anything about paying for her care. The family discussed payment in messages, but never agreed a figure [42] [85]. As Sheila’s dementia developed she needed watching day and night. Bern and her husband could not both leave the house [Q33].

Sheila died in April 2020. Bern then moved £100,000 from her mother’s accounts to her own [129]. By then the LPAs had ended, because an LPA usually ends when the donor dies. Bern was prosecuted for theft and found not guilty [161], and the bank returned the money to Sheila’s accounts [155].

Bern then sued Andrew, as executor. The High Court found that Sheila had made a binding contract to pay a reasonable price for her care [238]. A second trial valued it at £150 a day for 850 days, and awarded Bern £127,500, plus interest [Q61]. The judge said the dispute might have been avoided with a little more communication, and called it a real tragedy [123].

The lesson. Sheila’s wishes were clear to the people around her, but they were never written down with a figure attached. It took a criminal trial and two civil trials to settle what one page could have recorded.

Preference or instruction?

The fee clause is an instruction, because the official guidance says attorneys’ fees must be. Your wishes about your care, such as where you live and who looks after you, are better written as preferences. Our questionnaire uses the right form for each.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice. If a relative will be caring for you, or you are an attorney who also provides care, please get in touch.

Sources

• LP12: Make and register your lasting power of attorney, Office of the Public Guardian. Attorneys’ fees and expenses.
• SD14: OPG’s approach to family care payments, Office of the Public Guardian. Payments for care, and attorneys who are also carers.
• When a lasting power of attorney ends, GOV.UK
• Rogers v Wills [2025] EWHC 1367 (Ch) on Find Case Law. The liability judgment, 6 June 2025. Paragraph numbers without a prefix.
• Rogers v Wills [2025] EWHC 1367 (Ch) on BAILII
• Rogers v Wills [2026] EWHC 2231 (Ch) on Find Case Law. The quantum judgment, 25 August 2026. Paragraph numbers marked "Q".
• Rogers v Wills [2026] EWHC 2231 (Ch) on BAILII