By Rocco Clayfield, founder of GoldPaid (GOLDPAID LTD) · Published · updated
Before anything else
Not sure how any of this applies to your own items? Send us photos on WhatsApp, and we will help you, call 07944 014111 (8am to 9pm, 7 days a week). We can arrange postage after we have spoken. Nothing is posted until you decide, your parcel is tracked and signed for, the written offer follows the XRF assay, the return is free if you decline, and we aim to pay by Faster Payments within one working hour of your acceptance.
Whose decision is this?
The legal starting point is blunter than most families expect. Under section 1(2) of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 a person must be assumed to have capacity unless it is established that they lack it, and under section 1(4) a person is not to be treated as unable to make a decision merely because they make an unwise one. An eighty-four-year-old who wants to sell her mother’s brooch and spend the money on a conservatory is making a decision, not a mistake. The process, in the order it actually happens, is on selling gold by post, and it is worth reading together before anything is packed.
Capacity is also decision-specific and time-specific. Someone who could not manage a house sale may be perfectly able to decide about a drawer of broken chain, and someone who is muddled at eight in the evening may be entirely clear at eleven in the morning. The useful question is never “does Mum have capacity”, it is “can Mum decide this, today”.
That sets your role. You are there to help your parent decide, not to decide instead of them. Gov.uk puts the same duty on attorneys in a single line: act in the donor’s best interests and help them make their own decisions where possible. It is a good standard to hold yourself to even where no power of attorney exists at all.
What does doing it jointly actually look like?
- Go through the box together, in daylight, with no deadline. Separate what is staying from what nobody will ever wear again. Most boxes split cleanly, and the second pile is usually broken chain, odd earrings and worn plate.
- Photograph everything, laid out on a plain background, with hallmarks in focus. Keep a set on your phone and, if they use one, a set on theirs. The angles that actually help are in photographing jewellery for a remote valuation.
- Write an itemised list in your parent’s words: what each piece is, roughly what it weighs on a kitchen scale, and anything they remember about it. One copy goes in the parcel, one stays at home.
- Ask the questions in their name, on speakerphone, with them in the room. If the website itself is hard for them to use, the accessibility statement sets out other ways to get the same information. Do not quietly become the account holder for the sale.
- Read the written offer together, line by line, before anybody accepts anything.
- Let them accept, or decline. If they are not sure, decline and revisit it in a month. Nothing is lost by waiting.
Keeping your parent in every step is not sentiment, and it protects you as much as it protects them. A sale where the older person handled nothing, saw nothing in writing and received none of the money is the sale a sibling questions two years later, and it is exactly the pattern safeguarding teams are trained to notice. Doing it jointly and keeping the paperwork is how a genuinely helpful adult child stays visibly helpful.
Slow down further if a piece might be collectable rather than scrap. A signed maker’s mark, an unusual stone or a rare-date sovereign belongs in front of a specialist before it goes near any metal buyer, and the comparison is in auction versus a postal buyer. If the underlying question is whether to sell at all, selling versus keeping it works through that separately.
Whose bank account should the money go into?
Your parent’s. This is the question with the least room for interpretation, and it is worth being firm about even when the family arrangement is entirely innocent. Money from the sale of your mother’s jewellery is your mother’s money, and it goes into an account in her name. If she then wants to give some of it to you, that is a separate decision, made by her, with her own money, from her own account, and it leaves a record showing precisely that.
| Situation | Where payment should go | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Your parent owns the items and can make the decision | An account in their name | It is their property and their money. A payment into a helper’s account is the thing that looks wrong later, even when it was not. |
| You hold a registered property and financial affairs LPA | The donor’s own account | Gov.uk requires attorneys to keep the donor’s money and property separate from their own, unless you already share an account. |
| You are a court-appointed deputy | The account operated under the deputyship order | The order defines what you may do, and the Office of the Public Guardian supervises it. |
| The owner has died and the items are part of the estate | The estate, not any individual beneficiary | Until the estate is settled the items belong to it. See do you need probate to sell inherited jewellery. |
| You want to buy a piece from your parent yourself | Pay them a market figure, and record it | HMRC’s connected persons rule treats such a disposal as made at market value. See selling to a friend or family member. |
Expect a buyer to pay the seller and nobody else. GoldPaid pays by Faster Payments, and aims to do so within one working hour of acceptance, into an account in the name of the person selling. We do not pay a third party. A buyer who is relaxed about paying someone other than the owner is telling you something about their controls rather than doing your family a favour.
Identity checks are normal for a precious-metals buyer, and GoldPaid asks for a photograph of UK photo ID on every transaction. If your parent no longer holds a passport or a driving licence, raise it at the start rather than at the end. There are usually workable alternatives, and the moment the offer arrives is a poor time to discover a problem.
What records should you keep, and for how long?
Records are what turn a helpful act into a demonstrably helpful act. None of this takes more than twenty minutes and all of it is free.
| Record | Why it matters | How long to keep it |
|---|---|---|
| Dated photographs of every item, hallmarks included | Proves what was sent and the condition it was in | Indefinitely |
| The itemised list, in your parent’s words | Shows whose sale it was and what it covered | Indefinitely |
| Proof-of-postage receipt | It is the basis of any postal claim | Until payment has cleared, then file it |
| The written, itemised offer showing purity, weight and rate | Evidence the figure was seen and understood before acceptance | Indefinitely |
| The bank statement line showing payment into their account | Answers the one question a sibling, a bank or a social worker will ask | Six years is a sensible default |
| Messages and emails, including WhatsApp threads | Shows what was asked, what was promised and when | Indefinitely |
Six years is not a legal requirement here. It is simply the period most households already keep financial paperwork for, and it comfortably covers the window in which questions tend to arrive.
How do you shield a parent from the scams that target them?
The frauds aimed at older people selling gold are rarely clever. They are patient, they are local, and they work by arriving at the door rather than by being found online. The defences are equally simple, and they work best agreed in advance as a household rule rather than improvised at the moment somebody knocks.
| Pattern | What it looks like | The shield |
|---|---|---|
| Doorstep cold-caller | Someone knocks offering cash for gold on the spot, often after a leaflet through the door | Legitimate buyers do not knock on doors. Agree one rule: nothing is ever sold at the door, and nobody has to be polite about saying so. |
| Fake courier collection | A call or a professional-looking website says a courier has been booked to collect the items | Never hand precious metal to a collection nobody in the family booked. A real collection has a tracking number that exists before the knock. |
| Pressure calls | “This rate expires at five.” “Prices are about to fall.” Repeated calls after a valuation | No honest buyer sets a countdown. Ending a call has never cost anyone money. |
| The friendly regular | A trader who becomes a familiar face and buys one piece at a time, quietly below value | Piecemeal sales avoid the moment anyone compares a figure to the market. One written valuation of everything makes the pattern visible at a glance. |
| The unwritten offer | A number said out loud, cash handed over, a receipt worth nothing | Ask for it in writing before deciding. A refusal is itself the answer. |
| The one-day event | A hotel function room, a queue, a decision made in twenty minutes | There is no cancellation right on a sale you make as a consumer. See pop-up gold buying events. |
That last point surprises people, so it is worth stating plainly. The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 give a cancellation right to a consumer who buys from a trader. They do not apply where a trader buys from a consumer. Selling gold at the door, at an event or over a counter carries no fourteen-day cooling-off period, and neither does selling it by post. What a postal sale offers instead is the days between posting and accepting, spent at home, with a written figure in front of you. This is general information rather than legal advice.
The full anatomy of each of these, including the ones aimed at people of any age, is in the seven common gold selling scams, and the ten-minute checks that expose a bad buyer are in questions to ask a gold buyer before you post.
What if a power of attorney is involved?
A power of attorney changes the paperwork, not the principle. The money still belongs to your parent, the decision is still theirs wherever they can make it, and the records still matter. What changes is that you now have duties that are written down and enforceable.
In England and Wales the relevant document is a lasting power of attorney for property and financial affairs, and it must be registered with the Office of the Public Guardian before it can be used. Gov.uk is explicit that an attorney can act while the donor still has mental capacity only if the LPA says so and the donor gives permission, so holding an LPA does not by itself hand you the decision. A health and welfare LPA does not cover selling possessions at all.
The duties that apply to a property and financial affairs attorney are short and worth reading in full at gov.uk: attorney duties and using an LPA for property and financial affairs. In outline:
- Act in the donor’s best interests, and help them make their own decisions wherever they can.
- Follow any preferences and instructions written into the LPA itself.
- Keep the donor’s money and property separate from your own, unless you already share an account with them.
- Keep records of what you do and why. OPG can ask to see them.
- Gifts are tightly limited: customary occasions, to people the donor would normally give to, in amounts the donor can afford. Anything beyond that needs an application to the Court of Protection.
- You can be ordered to repay the donor’s money if you misuse it or make decisions that benefit yourself.
The gift rule is where well-meaning families most often go wrong. Selling a parent’s gold and distributing the proceeds among grandchildren is a gift, however obviously it matches what your parent would have wanted, and it is the point at which an attorney should stop and take advice rather than press on. Selling the items and banking the proceeds in the donor’s own account is not a gift, and is ordinary attorney business.
If no power of attorney exists and your parent can no longer make the decision, the route is an application to the Court of Protection for a deputyship order, not an informal family arrangement. There is no such thing as next-of-kin authority over another adult’s possessions in England and Wales, however close the relationship.
Scotland uses a continuing power of attorney for financial matters, registered with the Office of the Public Guardian (Scotland). Northern Ireland still uses an enduring power of attorney, registered through the Office of Care and Protection. The spirit of the duties is similar; the forms, the terminology and the supervising body are not, so use the guidance for the right nation.
If you are the person worried about somebody else’s attorney, concerns can be raised with the Office of the Public Guardian on 0300 456 0300 or at opg.safeguardingunit@publicguardian.gov.uk. OPG can investigate only where the person being helped lacks the mental capacity to deal with the issue themselves; where they have capacity, the routes are the police, Trading Standards and the local authority safeguarding team. The process is set out at gov.uk: report a concern about an attorney, deputy or guardian.
What if your parent has dementia, or lives in a care home?
A diagnosis is not the same as an absence of capacity, and early-stage dementia does not remove somebody’s right to decide about their own jewellery. Judge the decision in front of you, on the day, and if your parent cannot follow the explanation of what a written offer says, that is your answer for today rather than for ever. Nothing here has to be settled this month.
Two practical points come up repeatedly. If items are held in a care home’s safe, ask the manager for their release procedure in writing before making any plans, because homes have their own signing-out requirements and they are not always quick. And if care fees are the reason for the sale, take advice before selling anything: how a sale interacts with a local authority financial assessment is a question for the local authority and an independent adviser, not for a buyer.
Calmness helps more than efficiency here. There is no version of this where selling a week sooner materially changes the figure, and there are several versions where hurrying it damages something that matters more than the money.
What if a sibling disagrees?
Get one written, itemised valuation before anybody argues about numbers. A valuation showing each piece, the purity found, the weight and the rate used costs nothing, and declining it costs nothing, which means the family can have the discussion with facts in front of it rather than guesses and suspicions. Circulate the same document to everyone at the same time.
Where the items belong to an estate rather than to a living parent, the position changes, and the practical methods for splitting a jewellery box fairly are in dividing inherited jewellery between beneficiaries.
How does GoldPaid handle a sale where a family member is helping?
Plainly, and slowly where slowly is what is needed. You can ask anything on WhatsApp or by phone on 07944 014111 before a single item is posted, and there is no obligation at the end of it. Any figure given from photographs is indicative; nothing is firm before inspection, because weight, purity, hallmarks, stones, non-gold components, condition and the market on the day all move the number.
The process itself: a free prepaid Royal Mail Special Delivery label, usually within 30 minutes during working hours; XRF testing on arrival, with nothing melted or processed before written acceptance; a written, itemised offer showing the purity found, the weight and the rate used; a free tracked return at our cost if you decline; and payment by Faster Payments, which we aim to send within one working hour of acceptance, into an account in the name of the person selling. Royal Mail cover may be available up to £2,500 depending on the postal method and cover level used, so tell us if a parcel is worth more than that and we will discuss splitting it across more than one posting. For the practical risks of posting and how each one is handled, see whether it is safe to post gold.
The limitations matter more here than any sales pitch. Where a piece carries a maker’s name, a significant stone or genuine collector interest, an auction house or a specialist dealer may pay more than a metal buyer, so ask us how we would value it before anything is posted. We cannot verify anybody’s legal authority to sell. And where the owner of the items is not part of the conversation at all, we would rather pause than proceed, which occasionally irritates people and is still the right call.
On identity, check us the way this article suggests checking anyone: GOLDPAID LTD is registered at Companies House. ICO registration ZC214216 (data controller: Rocco Clayfield, trading as GoldPaid). Both are free to look up. Our Trustpilot profile is newer than most of the sector; whatever the live TrustScore on that page shows the day you check, read the individual reviews rather than the score alone. The full walkthrough of a postal sale is in how to sell gold safely by post.