Court of Protection issues

I have recently had some interesting Court cases that I have worked on.  The Court of Protection has jurisdiction over people who lack capacity to make their own decisions.  The Court deals with lots of different kinds of issues, either disputes between family members or disputes between the family and either a part of the NHS or social services.

They are almost always really sad situations, where negotiations have broken down and each party feels really strongly that the other party is wrong.  And so the matter ends up in Court.  The judges then have the difficult position of having to arbitrate these difficult situations if the parties are unable to agree.

The costs can be significant, costing thousands of pounds on each side in legal costs, which only adds to the stress, so early agreement is crucial for reasons of both stress and cost.

The Court have to decide issues about care and issues about finance, often when there isn’t a right answer, but a least worse answer and one or other party is going to be unhappy!

The costs of these cases are tricky subjects.  The costs of financial matters come from the person’s resources, the costs of health and welfare cases come from each parties own resources, so people that get dragged into litigation about welfare either pay legal fees for the privilege or are litigants in person and as much as the Court will give an allowance for people who are unrepresented by lawyers, what is clear is that they do not understand the process, often don’t act appropriately, don’t give the Court the right information in their statement and inevitably get a worse outcome than those that are represented.

And worst of all there is a risk that the person dies before the litigation is finalised and then absolutely no-one has won.

If you are facing a Court case and need help, then contact me and I can assist.