Power of Attorney in Prince Edward Island: A 2025 Overhaul

Prince Edward Island replaced its old Powers of Attorney Act on November 1, 2025 with the new Powers of Attorney and Personal Directives Act, which now sits alongside a separate law for health care decisions.

Information last verified on 2026-08-15. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Two Acts, not one

Prince Edward Island split its rules for planning ahead into two separate statutes, and it is important not to mix them up.

The Powers of Attorney and Personal Directives Act, R.S.P.E.I. 1988, Cap. P-16.1, enacted as S.P.E.I. 2023, c. 34, is the current statute governing financial powers of attorney and non-medical "personal directives" (living arrangements, personal care, association, and education or employment matters). This is a brand-new act, not a lightly updated old one. The former Powers of Attorney Act, R.S.P.E.I. 1988, Cap. P-16, was repealed effective November 1, 2025.

Health care and treatment decisions are governed by a different law entirely: the Consent to Treatment and Health Care Directives Act, R.S.P.E.I. 1988, Cap. C-17.2, first enacted in 1996 and amended in 2019 and 2023. The newer Act expressly excludes treatment decisions from its definition of what a personal directive can cover, so a personal directive made under P-16.1 does not authorize health care decisions. Those stay under the Consent to Treatment and Health Care Directives Act's own "health care directive" and "proxy" terms. The two documents can be physically combined into a single piece of paper, but each part is legally governed by its own Act.

A related change: the province's Public Trustee Act was itself repealed effective March 30, 2026 and replaced by the Public Guardian and Trustee Act. The office's correct current name is the Public Guardian and Trustee, not the Public Trustee.

Who can grant a power of attorney or personal directive

An adult, meaning someone 18 or older, who understands the nature and effect of a power of attorney may grant one. The same standard, in the same words, applies to granting a personal directive. A person is presumed to have capacity until shown otherwise.

The health care side uses a different, lower age threshold: under the Consent to Treatment and Health Care Directives Act, any person over the age of 16 who is capable may execute a health care directive and appoint a proxy.

Execution: witnessing depends on the type of document

Prince Edward Island's witnessing rules are lighter than some provinces, and they scale with how serious the document is.

An ordinary, non-enduring power of attorney needs no witness at all. It only needs to be signed and dated by the principal.

An enduring power of attorney, or a personal directive, must be signed and dated by the principal in the presence of one witness, who also signs in the principal's presence. Only one witness is required, not two.

Certain people cannot act as that witness for an enduring power of attorney or personal directive: a person named as attorney or agent; a family member of a named attorney or agent; an employee or authorized representative of a named attorney or agent, unless that attorney or agent is a PEI-licensed lawyer, the Public Guardian and Trustee, or a trust-authorized financial institution; anyone under 18; or anyone who does not understand the principal's mode of communication without interpretive assistance. The same list of barred people also applies to anyone signing on the principal's behalf.

Notarization is not required or mentioned anywhere in the execution provisions. There is no mandatory statutory form; the Act allows a form to be prescribed by future regulation, but explicitly says using it would not be mandatory even then, and no evidence was found that such a form has been prescribed.

If the principal is physically unable to sign, someone else may sign at the principal's direction and in the principal's presence, and that person's own signature must itself be witnessed under the same rules as if it were the principal's. A court can also validate a defectively executed power of attorney or personal directive on clear and convincing evidence of the principal's intent.

Health care directives follow a separate set of execution rules under the Consent to Treatment and Health Care Directives Act: the directive must be in writing and dated, signed by the maker or, if signed by someone else at the maker's direction, that person cannot be the proxy or the proxy's spouse. The maker must acknowledge the signature before a witness who is also barred from being the proxy or the proxy's spouse. A proxy appointment is only valid if the proxy, or someone at the proxy's direction, agrees to it in writing before the maker becomes incapable. Notarization is not required here either.

Enduring status is not automatic

Prince Edward Island defines an "enduring" power of attorney as one that either states the attorney's authority is not ended by the principal's later incapacity, or is drafted to take effect only once incapacity begins, which is the springing option. An irrevocable power of attorney given for value or to secure a debt is excluded from being treated as enduring.

If a power of attorney is silent on the point, it is not enduring by default. An ordinary power of attorney terminates automatically the moment the principal becomes incapable. Enduring status has to be built into the document.

Personal directives work differently by design: because a personal directive is only ever meant to take effect once the principal lacks capacity for the relevant matter, there is no separate "enduring" concept needed for it at all.

Attorney duties, gifts, and compensation

An attorney must act honestly, in good faith, and in the principal's best interests. The attorney should engage the principal in decision-making where possible, and consider the principal's known wishes and, once the principal is incapacitated, the principal's historical pattern of managing their own affairs. The attorney must use the principal's assets for the principal's benefit, keep the principal's property and funds separate from the attorney's own, keep financial records, and, once the principal is incapacitated, communicate regularly with and disclose transaction details to people entitled to that information. The standard of care is that of a prudent person in comparable circumstances, with comparable experience and expertise.

Compensation is conditional, not automatic. An attorney may be paid from the principal's property only if the power of attorney document expressly authorizes payment and states the basis for it, or if a court orders payment based on the effort, care, responsibility, and time the attorney has put in. Reimbursement of reasonable expenses is always available regardless. A personal-directive agent, by contrast, is explicitly barred from being paid at all, and can only be reimbursed for expenses.

Gift-giving authority is not addressed anywhere in the Act. The word "gift" does not appear in it. Prince Edward Island's broad definition of "financial matter" could arguably be read to include gift-giving, but there is no dedicated rule, dollar cap, or court-authorization mechanism the way some other provinces have. Any claim about a specific PEI gift-giving limit should be treated as unverified; the silence appears to be genuine, not an oversight in research.

Revocation and when authority ends

A power of attorney terminates on a stated date; on destruction of the document, or written revocation, by a principal who understands what revoking it means; on the principal's death; on the principal's incapacity, unless the document is enduring; on the attorney's death or incapacity; on the attorney's written resignation, which follows a cascading notice order (first the principal if capable, then a co-attorney, then an available adult family member, then the Public Guardian and Trustee); on the attorney becoming disqualified under the Act's disqualification rules, for powers of attorney made after the Act came into force; on a court appointing a trustee for the attorney under Prince Edward Island's adult guardianship and trusteeship legislation; automatically where the principal and attorney were spouses and cease to cohabit with the intent to end the relationship, unless the document says otherwise (see our guide to common-law relationships in Prince Edward Island for how the province defines that status); or by court order.

Personal directives terminate on a parallel set of triggers, plus an added feature: a personal directive automatically suspends, matter by matter, whenever the principal regains capacity for that specific matter.

No general registration or filing requirement exists for a power of attorney or personal directive in Prince Edward Island. The Act only gives the province's Lieutenant Governor in Council the power to create a registry by future regulation; no evidence was found that such a registry currently operates. On the health care side, the registration section of the Consent to Treatment and Health Care Directives Act has never been brought into force, so there is no health-care-directive registry either.

An accounting from an attorney can be compelled by the province's Prothonotary or a court, and a court can suspend or terminate an attorney's authority for abuse of power or for failing to comply with an accounting order.

The Consent to Treatment and Health Care Directives Act

Because health care decisions sit outside the power of attorney statute, Prince Edward Island's separate health care law carries its own detailed rules.

A person over 16 who is capable may appoint a health care proxy. Treatment-decision capacity itself is judged by whether, in the health practitioner's opinion, the patient can understand relevant information, understand how it applies to their own situation, understand they have the right to decide, and appreciate the reasonably foreseeable consequences. Capacity is presumed, and it is assessed matter by matter and time by time, not as a single blanket status.

A health care directive takes effect once the maker becomes incapable of making or communicating decisions, or on another triggering event stated in the directive, and it lasts for the duration of the incapacity. Where more than one proxy is named, the default is that they act successively, in the order named, unless the directive says otherwise; if named to act jointly, a majority decides.

A proxy's decisions supersede those of a court or guardian unless the directive says otherwise, and in certain circumstances even take priority over the maker's own contemporaneous instructions, subject to review for misconduct. If a spouse is named as proxy, that appointment is automatically revoked if the couple stops being spouses after the directive was made, unless the directive expressly says otherwise.

The Act also protects a witness, proxy, or person who signed on the maker's behalf, or their spouse, from having a bequest, insurance proceeds, or an intestate share voided merely because they played one of those roles in the execution.

Willfully concealing, falsifying, forging, or, without consent, altering, cancelling, or damaging a health care directive, or a proxy willfully misrepresenting a patient's wishes, is an offence carrying a fine of up to $2,000, imprisonment of up to six months, or both. An out-of-province directive is recognized in Prince Edward Island if it meets either PEI's own formal requirements or those of the jurisdiction where it was made or where the maker was habitually resident.

Forms, kits, and fees

No prescribed statutory form exists under either Act. Both the power of attorney and personal directive law and the health care law say that any future regulation-prescribed form would be optional to use, not mandatory. No official government-produced power of attorney kit or step-by-step public guide was found on the province's website. A do-it-yourself "Power of Attorney Kit" is offered by Legal Info PEI, a nonprofit public legal education organization, but it is not a government resource and is not used as a source for any legal specific in this article.

No fee for executing or registering a power of attorney was found, which is consistent with there being no operating registry. The Public Guardian and Trustee does charge its own service fees for administering estates and trusteeships, set by regulation, but the specific current dollar amounts were not pulled from a primary source for this article and are deliberately left unstated.

The penalty for misconduct under the power of attorney statute is steeper than the health care one. Willfully concealing or altering a power of attorney or personal directive without consent, or conditioning accommodation or services on someone granting power of attorney authority, is an offence carrying a fine of up to $10,000 on summary conviction, five times the maximum under the health care law.

For related estate-planning topics, see our overview of power of attorney across Canada, making a will in Canada, and what happens when someone dies without a will.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about powers of attorney, personal directives, and health care directives in Prince Edward Island and is not legal advice. Several items are deliberately left unstated because they were not confirmed from a primary source: whether a power of attorney or personal directive registry has since been established by regulation, the exact current dollar fee schedule for Public Guardian and Trustee services, whether any regulations have been made prescribing disqualifying offences for an attorney or agent or a virtual-execution option, and the precise coming-into-force date of the province's adult guardianship and trusteeship legislation. Confirm current requirements with the Public Guardian and Trustee of Prince Edward Island or a licensed lawyer before signing or relying on any power of attorney, personal directive, or health care directive.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Prince Edward Island's power of attorney law new?

Yes. The Powers of Attorney and Personal Directives Act took effect November 1, 2025, replacing the province's older Powers of Attorney Act. It is a comprehensive modern statute, not a minor update, and it also created the personal directive as a distinct instrument.

Does a power of attorney in Prince Edward Island cover health care decisions?

No. Health care and treatment decisions are governed by a separate law, the Consent to Treatment and Health Care Directives Act, using its own terms of health care directive and proxy. A power of attorney or personal directive made under the newer Act does not authorize treatment decisions.

How many witnesses does a power of attorney need in Prince Edward Island?

An ordinary, non-enduring power of attorney needs no witness at all. An enduring power of attorney, or a personal directive, needs exactly one witness, who cannot be the named attorney or agent or a close relative of that person, among other restrictions.

Is a power of attorney automatically enduring in Prince Edward Island?

No. A power of attorney terminates automatically on the principal's incapacity unless the document expressly states that it is enduring, either taking effect immediately and continuing through incapacity, or springing into effect only once incapacity begins.

Can an attorney be paid for acting in Prince Edward Island?

Only if the power of attorney document expressly authorizes payment and states the basis for it, or a court orders payment. A personal-directive agent cannot be paid at all under the Act, only reimbursed for expenses.

Is there a registry for powers of attorney in Prince Edward Island?

No. There is currently no operating registry for powers of attorney, personal directives, or health care directives in Prince Edward Island, though the law allows one to be created by future regulation.