My husband’s heart attack was the beginning of our nightmare… Simple money mistake lost me £20k before his last breath

NICKY Wake’s life as she knew it was over when her husband Andy’s doctor told her: “I’m sorry, but your story doesn’t have a happy ending.” 

Andy had suffered a series of heart attacks that had left him brain-damaged, and there was no hope of him ever getting better.

But not only did Nicky have to deal with the heartbreak of seeing her “wonderful, artistic and creative” husband become a “shell of a man”, it was also the start of a three-year-long money nightmare, too.

What she didn’t realise was that her husband’s condition meant she had lost access to at least £20,000 worth of life savings locked in the couple’s joint bank account as a result of a simple money mistake they had made. 

That’s because they had not got an important document called a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) in place. 

This is a vital safety net to ensure that if you no longer have the ability to manage your money – for example, if you had dementia – a trusted loved one can do it on your behalf. 

Not having this paperwork in place can cause financial chaos if your loved one falls ill, as Nicky discovered. 

The 54-year-old events business owner from Manchester spent three long years fighting in court to get access to their money again, which cost her £20,000 in legal fees.

“It was hell on earth,” Nicky said. “I was fighting possibly the biggest battle of my life – I’d lost my soulmate very suddenly. Then I was wasting tens of thousands of pounds to access money that was legally mine.”

There are two types of LPA: one for making money choices, like paying the mortgage and household bills (called property and financial affairs) and one for making care decisions (called health and welfare).

Ideally, you want to set up both, and crucially, you must apply while you still have mental capacity. 

The forms are free, and it costs £82 to register one with the Office of the Public Guardian, but the price is set to rise to £92 on November 17.

Setting an LPA up for your money is incredibly important, as no one – not even a family member – has the legal right to manage your bank account, even if you fall ill.

But despite this, only 10% of adults aged 40 and over have one in place.

Almost 300,000 LPAs were registered in January to March this year – a fall from 21% the previous year.

If you don’t have a financial LPA and you handle the bills, they could go unpaid – leaving you with a black mark on your credit file.

It could lead to your utility providers disconnecting your service, late payment charges, and mortgage arrears. 

While spouses can still use joint bank accounts, they can’t access any accounts solely in your name.

When I tried to gain access to Andy’s bank accounts, I realised I had walked into a legal nightmare.

Nicky Wake

Esther Trevelyan, head of private client at HCB Widdows Mason, said: “Without access to a person’s funds in their sole name, this can leave bills unpaid and the family could end up dealing with debt recovery teams or being inundated with correspondence, which can make an already difficult time much more stressful.”

If you don’t have an LPA set up and you lose mental capacity, a family member will have to apply to the Court of Protection to appoint a “deputy” who can take control of your affairs.

This is a very expensive process that can drag out for six to 12 months. 

There’s an application fee of £421, and if there’s a hearing, you’ll pay £259.

Extra fees on top for money assessments can cost up to £920, and you may need a specialist lawyer to help with your case. 

Families in this position could easily spend £850 to £1,500 on legal fees for a very straightforward application – or much more if it’s a complicated case – says Hudda Morgan, partner at law firm Spencer West LLP.

‘It was a perfect hell’

Going through the Court of Protection to become a deputy was the three-year-long agonising ordeal that Nicky had to go through to get control of Andy’s money.

Nicky ended up paying more than the average amount to become a deputy because her case was complex, as it involved personal savings and business funds, too. 

Nicky described Andy as the “love of her life”, marrying him just a year after they met in 2002.

They became business partners in 2005, when Nicky’s events business, Don’t Panic Events, started to fly and Andy joined her to help run it.

They had a baby, Finn, in 2007.

The couple had never discussed wills or setting up a power of attorney because they didn’t want to think about dying.

But Nicky would come to bitterly regret that decision when, in 2017, she came back from a business trip to find Andy complaining of chest pains.

Following a doctor’s trip, he was rushed to the hospital and had three stents fitted after it was discovered he was having a heart attack.

After being discharged from hospital four days later, Andy had another horrific heart attack at home, leaving Nicky to perform CPR on him for 40 minutes while she waited for an ambulance.

It was this heart attack that left Andy brain-damaged.

Nicky says: “I was in shock, horror, terror and disbelief.”

Andy’s loss of capacity meant she had suddenly lost control of the business’s funds. It also affected the way she got paid as a company director and pushed her tax bill up.

The couple were co-directors of the business and paid themselves in dividends.

Dividends are a way for you to pay yourself from your own company’s profits. Many business owners pay themselves this way as it’s more tax-efficient than paying yourself through PAYE.

Nicky was legally required to pay both her and Andy the same level of income in dividends.

But as she and Andy weren’t able to access his account she was paying his salary into, she knew she was locking more money away in his frozen account.

So Nicky had to pay herself a different way.

Instead, she started paying herself from her business through PAYE, which meant she was paying £40,000 more in tax.

On top of that, all the couple’s savings of £20,000 were held in an ISA under Andy’s name, which meant she could no longer access their life savings.

I remember sobbing in the kitchen once while putting together the paperwork at the end of the year because each receipt reminded me that Andy couldn’t be there for those moments.

Nicky Wake

She says: “When I tried to gain access to Andy’s bank accounts, I realised I had walked into a legal nightmare.

“I had to solo-parent a child while running a business that I couldn’t even pay myself properly from. It was a perfect kind of hell.”

Nicky had to apply to the Court of Protection to become a deputy for Andy’s financial affairs, which meant she could make decisions for him as he no longer had the mental capacity. 

It also meant she had to log exactly how she was spending Andy’s money and keep receipts for each purchase. 

Nicky says: “If Finn needed school shoes or I was getting him a birthday present, I needed to keep the receipt. Every year, I had to submit receipts for expenditure.

“I remember sobbing in the kitchen once while putting together the paperwork at the end of the year because each receipt reminded me that Andy couldn’t be there for those moments.”

She finally got access to Andy’s finances nearly two years later. The whole saga ended up costing Nicky £20,000 in legal fees. Sadly, Andy died three years later in 2020 from Covid.

She says: “The amount of money I wasted and sleepless nights I went through was heartbreaking – I don’t want anyone else to go through what I did.”

Nicky now runs the dating apps Chapter2 and The Widowed Collective alongside her events business.

Spencer West LLP’s Hudda Morgan says: “Making powers of attorney is much easier when you are fit and well, much harder if health and mental capacity are diminished.

“It’s one of those things like an insurance policy – make it when you’re well, stick it in a drawer and forget about it, and hopefully you’ll never need it.

“But in the event you do, everyone will be relieved that it’s been taken care of, and you’ll have done all you can to make things easy for you and your family.”