# Does My Spouse Automatically Have Power of Attorney?

> Source: https://purewill.co.uk/guides/does-my-spouse-automatically-have-power-of-attorney (updated 25 October 2026)

**Short answer:** No. Marriage gives your spouse no automatic right to manage your money or make medical decisions if you lose capacity. Without an LPA they must apply to a court.

## The short answer is no

Marriage and civil partnership give your spouse no automatic authority over your affairs if you lose mental capacity. None. Your husband cannot operate your bank account. Your wife cannot instruct your doctors. Joint decisions you made together for decades become decisions nobody is legally allowed to make.

This surprises almost everyone, and it is the most expensive misunderstanding in this whole area.

## What actually happens

Joint accounts blur the picture for a while, because your spouse can usually keep using a joint account day to day. But banks can freeze joint accounts once they learn one holder has lost capacity, and anything in your sole name (your pension, your ISA, your salary, a house owned as tenants in common) is simply out of reach. So is your half of most financial decisions: remortgaging, selling the house, moving money into care fees.

On the health side, doctors will listen to your spouse and usually involve them in best-interests decisions. Listening is not deciding. Without a health and welfare LPA, the final say rests with the medical team, and your spouse has no legal power to accept or refuse treatment on your behalf.

## The court route nobody wants

The fallback is a deputyship from the Court of Protection. Your spouse applies to be appointed your deputy, pays a £432 application fee, files a medical assessment, waits typically four to six months, then lives with annual supervision fees, an insurance bond, and yearly reports to the court for as long as the deputyship lasts. Solicitor help, which most applicants need, adds four figures.

Deputyships for health and welfare are rarer still, because the court grants them reluctantly. In practice your family may never get the medical authority an LPA would have given them for £92.

## Married couples need LPAs most

The odd thing about the misconception is that it is backwards. Couples have the most intertwined finances and the most to lose from a freeze. A single person's affairs stall; a couple's household can stop functioning while the mortgage still wants paying.

Each of you makes your own LPAs, usually appointing each other plus a backup, often an adult child. The paperwork doubles but the questions barely change, which is why doing it together is so much easier.

## With PureWill

A [couple's set](https://purewill.co.uk/power-of-attorney), all four LPAs, is £199 with one shared questionnaire so you only type the household details once. It is the same logic as [mirror wills](https://purewill.co.uk/guides/what-is-a-mirror-will), and if you have neither, sort [the wills](https://purewill.co.uk/start) at the same time. Marriage does not write those for you either.

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PureWill is run by Nanoswift Ltd, registered in England and Wales (company number 16216561), ICO registration ZB874287. Payments by Stripe. Write a will: https://purewill.co.uk/start · Set up an LPA: https://purewill.co.uk/power-of-attorney