What is the Court of Protection?
The Court of Protection is the specialist court for decisions affecting people who lack mental capacity. It appoints deputies, resolves disputes about attorneys, decides one-off matters such as statutory wills and large gifts, and can revoke a power of attorney that is being misused.
Its most familiar function is appointing deputies where no LPA exists. But it also decides individual questions — whether a particular gift may be made, whether a property may be sold, whether serious medical treatment should proceed.
A statutory will is one of its more significant powers: where someone lacks testamentary capacity, the court can authorise a will on their behalf, which is often the only route left when an estate plan is discovered to be badly out of date.
Applications take months and cost money. Almost everything it does could have been avoided by a document signed while capacity remained.