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A woman says her husband’s heart attack was the beginning of a nightmare - and a simple money mistake lost her £20k before his last breath. A simple form would have saved Nicky Wake from a legal nightmare when her husband was tragically left brain-damaged from a heart attack. Nicky Wake says husband Andy suffered a series of heart attacks that had left him brain-damaged. Nicky says Andy was the love of her life and they had got married after just a year together . The couple had a son, Finn, together and had also run a business called Don’t Panic Events. READ MORE Monzo makes change to buy now, pay later for 13 million customers But, heartbreakingly, they had not got an important document called a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) in place. “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.” The forms are free, and it costs £82 to register one with the Office of the Public Guardian. 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 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.” 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.” 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.”
