Type of Powers of Attorney

Enduring power of attorney

An Enduring Power of Attorney allows you to appoint someone to make financial and property decisions if you are no longer able to make them yourself. However, you can only make the enduring power while you still have the capacity to make your own decisions.

You can specify when the Enduring Power of Attorney is to come into effect: either ‘immediately’ – this can be prior to you losing decision-making capacity – or only when you have lost mental capacity.

For example, you might specify that your appointed attorney can start immediately and pay bills on your behalf if you are physically unable to, but only take over making all your financial decisions when you no longer have mental capacity.

Or you can authorise it to start only when you no longer have capacity to manage your own financial decisions. It’s completely up to you to set it up as you want.

Attorneys appointed under an Enduring Power of Attorney cannot make decisions about your health, lifestyle or where you live. You will need an Enduring Guardian to appoint decision-makers for health, personal and lifestyle decisions.

You can also make an Advanced Care Directive to specify what medical decisions you would like made if you can no longer make decisions for yourself. There’s more information about these two options further down this page.

Other powers of attorney

There are other forms of powers of attorney that are designed for short-term appointments. These cover situations when you have decision-making capacity but need someone to make decisions about your finances for you temporarily – for example, if you are in hospital or ill or you travel overseas. The appointments usually end when the event is over (that is, you return to Australia or are released from hospital).

For all the applicable forms, visit the Land Tasmania webpage.

Every Australian state and territory has different rules governing powers of attorney. It’s important to check the rules in other jurisdictions if you think your attorney may need to act on your behalf in financial matters in other jurisdictions.

What is ‘capacity’?

Capacity is a legal term that refers to your ability to make your own decisions. In Tasmania it’s sometimes called ‘mental capacity’.

People may have capacity throughout their adult years and be able to look after their own financial and other decisions, but they may lose capacity due to an accident, illness or adverse effects of ageing.

You have decision-making capacity if you are able to:

• understand the information relevant to the decision and the effect of the decision

• retain that information to the extent necessary to make that decision

• use or weigh up that information as part of the process of making the decision

• communicate your decision and your views and needs in some way, including by speech, gestures or other means