A deputy is appointed by the Court of Protection for a person who lacks the mental capacity to make decisions themselves but has no Power of Attorney in place. There are two types of decisions that deputies can be appointed for: property and financial affairs such as paying bills, and personal welfare such as organising care on their behalf.

Usually when the time comes where the deputy can no longer make decisions, either because they no longer have capacity themselves or because they pass away, a new application has to be made to the court to appoint new deputies.

However, in a recent case the Court of Protection has appointed successive deputies for a young women suffering from autism. What this means is that instead of having to make a new application for a new deputy, successive deputies have already been put in place for when they are needed. This is an interesting case because previously the court has not wanted to put successive deputies in place and even in this particular case the application was at first refused by the Judge.

There are various reasons why the appointment of successive deputies has not previously happened and these are primarily due to concerns about practicality. For instance, how the Order appointing the successive deputies would be worded to cover all eventualities and whether banks, building societies and other financial institutions would be willing or able to deal with the successive appointment.  The court are also concerned that the persons deemed suitable to be successive deputies now may not still be felt to be so at the point where the primary deputies cannot act.

Whilst all these issues were considered in the recent case it was felt that the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.  In this case, one of the factors considered was that those with autism have difficulty connecting with people and it can take them several months to get familiar with a stranger.  The Judge felt that the factor of “magnetic importance” was that it would give piece of mind to the young woman’s parents to know that if something were to happen to them, there would be someone with whom their daughter was familiar to help and act in her best interests.  

Whilst there are obviously practical difficulties which can arise in successive appointments I can see the advantage of them, particularly where they relate to deputies for disabled adults.  It remains to be seen whether this case opens the door to similar applications but I think that as this was so fact specific that successive appointments of deputies would only be agreed in extremely similar cases.