Looking after your loved ones
When a person suffers mental incapacity and has a large estate or no close family or friends, in some cases it may be appropriate for a professional deputy to be appointed to manage their property and financial affairs.
What are the responsibilities of a professional deputy?
The role of a professional deputy is to make decisions for an incapacitated person in relation to a broad range of matters, including:
- Paying bills
- Managing insurance policies
- Day-to-day spending amounts
They may also be required to help arrange and fund any care that the person requires.
Something which sadly happens quite often is the sudden loss of mental capacity as the result of a brain injury, for example, from a workplace or road traffic accident, in which a person is awarded a large settlement as compensation for their injuries.
These settlements can run into millions of pounds to cover the cost of life-long care resulting from the injury. Properly managing that amount of money is extremely challenging for most prospective deputies. Initially, there are considerations in relation to making changes to living arrangements, such as home alterations, arranging for care schedules, and physiotherapy, and these things have to be managed throughout the person’s life, in addition to managing the estate itself.
This requires a lot of work, which is why, in certain instances, it may be best to appoint a professional deputy to act in the person’s best interests.
Our professional deputy services
At Nelsons, we manage a large number of estates as professional deputies and we pride ourselves on taking the time to get to know our clients as individuals, providing a bespoke, tailored professional deputy service. It’s a lifelong partnership that we have with them and we recognise that everyone’s circumstances and requirements are as individual as they are.
Our team have acted as a professional deputy for a broad range of people with different mental incapacities, including:
- Children who have suffered injuries at birth
- People who have suffered brain injuries following an accident, assault or negligent medical care
- Adults with severe learning disabilities
- People with degenerative illnesses, such as dementia
Our team is also recommended by the independently-researched publication, The Legal 500, as one of the leading teams in the country.