Power of Attorney Northern Ireland Cost: Fees Breakdown for 2026

The Registration Fee: £189

The court fee to register an Enduring Power of Attorney with the Office of Care and Protection in Belfast is £189 as of April 2026. This fee is paid out of the donor's estate and is submitted alongside Form EP2 and the original signed EPA document.

Many websites and blog posts from local solicitors still quote older figures — £151 or £180 — because they haven't updated their content since the last fee revision. The current fee schedule is published by the Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (NICTS).

If the donor receives means-tested benefits, the registration fee can be waived entirely. You'd submit Form ER1 (Application for Court Fee Exemption or Remission) alongside your EP2 application.

Creating the EPA Itself

The EPA form is available free from the Law Society of Northern Ireland. There is no government fee for creating or signing the document — only for registering it later when the donor loses capacity.

So if you prepare the EPA yourself, the total cost before registration is effectively zero: free form, no stamp duty, no filing fee. You pay the £189 only when registration becomes necessary.

What a Solicitor Charges

If you hire a solicitor to draft and execute the EPA, typical costs in Northern Ireland range from £200 to £500 plus VAT for straightforward cases. Belfast firms tend to charge at the higher end; solicitors in smaller towns like Enniskillen, Omagh, or Newry often charge less.

What you're paying for is the solicitor's time to:

• Take instructions on the scope of powers and restrictions
• Prepare the EPA using the prescribed form
• Arrange the signing ceremony with proper witnesses
• Store the original document securely

Some solicitors bundle EPA preparation with a will review or advance care planning consultation, which can push the total to £600–£800. But the EPA itself doesn't legally require a solicitor — any mentally capable adult can create one using the prescribed form.

The Cost If You Don't Have an EPA

This is where the numbers become painful. If someone loses mental capacity without an EPA in place, the family must apply to the High Court for a Controllership Order through the OCP. The costs stack up fast:

A straightforward controllership application runs £2,000 or more in the first year alone, plus ongoing annual fees for as long as the arrangement continues. That's compared to £189 (or less) for an EPA registration.

The controllership process also takes around six months from application to appointment, during which the family has no legal authority to manage the person's finances. Bank accounts stay frozen. Property can't be sold. Care home fees can't be paid from the person's funds.

Fee Comparison at a Glance

The arithmetic is stark: spending a few hundred pounds on an EPA while the donor has capacity saves thousands if the alternative is a court-ordered controllership.

The Northern Ireland EPA Guide includes a full cost-comparison worksheet, step-by-step registration instructions, and the EP1/EP2 forms walkthrough — everything you need to handle it yourself and keep costs to the £189 minimum.

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