Most people are very familiar with the concept of a Will – a legal document which sets out your wishes as to how your assets are dealt with following your death.
But what if you would like someone to carry our your wishes, or act on your behalf while you are still alive? This is the concept of the Power of Attorney.
In Ireland, there are two types
In Ireland, there are two types of Power of Attorney. The first is a simple “Power of Attorney” and the second is an “Enduring Power of Attorney”.
“In its simplest terms, an Enduring Power of Attorney is where you appoint one or two persons to look after your affairs.”
What do they mean?
In certain transactions (for example property transactions), you may be asked to execute a “Power of Attorney”. This is a legal document where you give another person the power to act on your behalf (your “Attorney”) in all or certain elements of a particular transaction. Usually, these permissions are limited in scope or time – such as the power to execute a document on your behalf in a certain transaction only or, alternatively, to execute documents for you for a defined period. These Powers of Attorney either expire or come to an end if you become mentally incapacitated.
“An Enduring Power of Attorney is that it can only be put in place while you have the mental capacity to do so.”
On the other hand, in its simplest terms, an Enduring Power of Attorney is a document in which you appoint one or two persons to look after your affairs, in the event that you are medically diagnosed as incapable of doing so, at some point in the future.
The important thing to note about an Enduring Power of Attorney is that it can only be put in place
