Who can make a power of attorney or guardianship?
To appoint someone as your attorney or guardian, you must: • be 18 years of age or over • have sufficient capacity to make the appointment. Capacity, or legal capacity, means you have the ability to reason things out. You canunderstand, retain, believe, evaluate (that is, process) and weigh up relevant information. This means that at the time of making the appointment of power of attorney or guardianship, you must be able to understand things like: • what sorts of powers the attorney or guardian will have • what sorts of decisions they will have the authority to make • when and how they will have the authority to exercise that power • the effects that their power could have on you and the things that are important to you • how to cancel or change the arrangement in the future. Then you must be able to weigh up the risks and benefits and make a decision based on what matters most to you, without pressure from anyone else.
