England and Wales only. Published Mon 24th Aug 2026. This describes the process and is not legal advice.
Most people carry a quiet assumption about what happens if they have a stroke, an accident or a diagnosis that takes their decisions away. My wife will deal with the bank. My son will speak to the doctors. I am their next of kin, and they are mine.
In England and Wales that assumption is wrong, and the moment it is tested is the worst possible moment to find out. This article explains what next of kin does and does not mean, what a bank or a pension provider will actually ask for, and how to put legal authority in place while you still can. It describes the process. It is not legal advice.
The phrase next of kin appears on hospital forms, employer records and the back of passports. It feels official. Legally, in England and Wales, it is not. One NHS trust's own clinical law guidance puts it directly: next of kin "has no legal status, being undefined in English law", and since the role is not defined in law, "it is unsurprising that the next of kin has no powers."
Being someone's next of kin means the hospital will ring you. It does not mean the hospital will take instructions from you, and it does not mean the bank will.
Marriage does not change that. A husband or wife has no automatic right to operate the other's sole bank account, cash in the other's pension, or consent to treatment on the other's behalf. Neither does an adult child, however close, however obviously trusted. The law does not look at the relationship. It looks for a document.
Government guidance on managing a bank account for someone else, which applies in England and Wales, says that banks and building societies "will always need to check specific documents before they can let you manage another person's account". One of those documents is "evidence of your authority to act for the account holder".
The guidance then lists what counts as authority, and it is a short list:
Nowhere on that list is a marriage certificate or a birth certificate. A wife walking into a branch with her husband's debit card and a letter from his consultant has none of the three.
One high street bank's published policy shows what this looks like at the counter. Before an attorney can operate an account it asks for the full power of attorney document, original or certified copy, two forms of identification, and for lasting powers of attorney an access code from the government's online service. Without those, the answer is no, politely.
Pension providers apply the same rule. One provider's guidance to its policyholders says that for someone else to make decisions and communicate about a policy, "we would need to see the registered property and financial affairs LPA", or an access code to view it online. And it says, in terms, that in the UK "next of kin" has no automatic legal rights to make decisions for you: "Your next of kin cannot access bank accounts, pay bills, manage property or deal with pensions without a registered POA."
A private pension, an annuity, a final salary scheme: the people who run them are holding money that belongs to one named person, and they will release it or reorganise it only on that person's instruction or on the instruction of someone with legal authority to give it.
Couples often assume the joint account solves it. It helps, and it is better than nothing, but the same government guidance says that if one joint account holder loses mental capacity, banks and building societies "can decide whether or not to temporarily restrict the use of the account to essential transactions only (for example, living expenses and medical or residential-care bills) until a deputy has been appointed or a power of attorney registered".
So the joint account may keep paying the gas bill. Moving savings, selling the house, switching a poor-value account, sorting out tax: those can wait on a document, and the document can take months.
The health side runs the same way. If you cannot make a decision about your own treatment, the clinicians treating you decide in your best interests, and they will ask your family what you would have wanted. Asking is not the same as taking instruction. Unless someone holds a registered health and welfare lasting power of attorney, no relative has the authority to consent to or refuse treatment on your behalf, or to decide where you live.
The authority that banks, pension providers and hospitals recognise is a lasting power of attorney, registered with the Office of the Public Guardian. There are two: one for property and financial affairs, one for health and welfare. You make them while you are well, naming the people you would want to act, and once registered they sit unused until they are needed.
Two facts about timing matter more than anything else in this article.
You must have mental capacity when you sign. After a stroke, a serious accident or a dementia diagnosis that has progressed, it is too late to make one, and the only route left is an application to the Court of Protection for someone to be appointed as your deputy. That costs £432 per application, takes months, and the court, not you, chooses the person. What happens if you do not have one goes through it.
And a lasting power of attorney does nothing until it is registered. Registration costs £92 per document and currently takes somewhere between 8 and 20 weeks. A signed form in a drawer is not authority. A registered one is.
Decide who you would trust to act for you, and whether they would act together or separately. Make both kinds of lasting power of attorney. Have them checked. Register them now, while the cost is £92 a document and the fix for any mistake is a pen.
Everything the document contains, from choosing attorneys to the certificate provider and registration, is in the complete guide to lasting power of attorney in England and Wales. If you would rather have it prepared and checked by a person before you sign, that is what Power of Attorney Service does.
Power of Attorney Service is a trading name of Dead Easy Legal Ltd, registered in England and Wales.