End-of-Life Planning in Manitoba: A Complete Guide

End-of-life planning in Manitoba involves three systems that most people deal with separately but that actually need to work together: medical planning (your health care directive and Goals of Care), financial planning (your Enduring Power of Attorney), and estate planning (your will and beneficiary designations). A gap in any one of them creates problems that spill into the others.

Here's what a complete plan looks like, and how the pieces connect.

Medical Planning: Health Care Directive + Goals of Care

Your health care directive is the legal document that names a proxy and records your treatment preferences under The Health Care Directives Act. Manitoba requires only that it be written, signed, and dated — no lawyer needed, no witness required if you sign it yourself. Anyone aged 16 or older with capacity can create one.

But the directive is the foundation, not the finished product. Manitoba's regional health authorities — including Shared Health (formerly WRHA) — use a clinical Goals of Care form to translate your broad preferences into active medical orders. This form designates one of three treatment levels:

• Level C (Comfort) — all clinical interventions focus on comfort and symptom management, excluding CPR and other life-prolonging measures
• Level M (Medical) — active medical treatment for illness, but no resuscitation or life support
• Level R (Resuscitative) — all interventions including attempted CPR and intensive care

The Goals of Care form is completed by a physician or nurse practitioner, usually during a hospital admission, personal care home intake, or a clinical conversation prompted by a change in health status. If you already have a health care directive that references these levels, the clinical conversation is a confirmation. If you don't, the care team starts from scratch — which is harder for everyone involved.

Shared Health and regional health authorities provide advance care planning resources, including conversation guides and worksheets. These are helpful starting points, but they focus on the clinical side — they don't address financial planning, estate documents, or the procedural steps for distributing and storing your directive.

Financial Planning: Enduring Power of Attorney

A health care directive does not give your proxy any authority over your finances. For that, you need a separate Enduring Power of Attorney under The Powers of Attorney Act.

The critical word is "enduring." A standard power of attorney automatically terminates when the donor loses mental capacity. An EPA that includes an explicit enduring clause continues to operate after incapacity — which is the entire point for most families. Without that clause, the document lapses exactly when you need it, and the only alternative is a court-ordered committeeship that costs $3,000 to $5,000 and takes months.

The EPA requires a qualified professional witness for signing: a lawyer, notary public, physician, police officer, judge, or marriage commissioner. This is stricter than the health care directive, which needs no witness for self-signing. Plan accordingly — you can complete your health care directive at your kitchen table, but the EPA needs a witness appointment.

Estate Planning: Wills and Beneficiary Designations

Your will determines what happens to your assets after death. It names an executor, directs the distribution of property, and can appoint guardians for minor children. Without a will, Manitoba's Intestate Succession Act divides your estate according to a statutory formula — which may not match your wishes at all.

Assets with designated beneficiaries — RRSPs, TFSAs, life insurance policies, jointly held bank accounts — pass outside the will entirely. This means the beneficiary designations on your financial accounts are as important as the will itself. Outdated beneficiary designations (naming an ex-spouse, for example) can override what your will says.

Manitoba eliminated asset-value-based probate fees in November 2020, so estates of any size pay $0 in provincial probate tax. But the probate process itself is still required for most solely owned assets — the court needs to validate the will and grant the executor authority to act. Court filing fees at the King's Bench still apply (approximately $250 for a Notice of Application).

How the Pieces Connect

The three planning streams intersect at several critical points:

Incapacity. If you lose the ability to make decisions, your health care directive governs medical choices and your EPA governs financial ones. If either document is missing, the gap gets filled by institutional defaults — the next-of-kin hierarchy for medical decisions, and the Public Guardian and Trustee or a court-appointed committee for financial ones. Both alternatives are slower, more expensive, and less likely to reflect your actual wishes.

Death. At death, both the directive and the EPA terminate automatically. Authority shifts to the executor named in your will. If there's no will, authority shifts to whoever the court appoints as administrator — a process that adds weeks or months to estate settlement.

The transition between incapacity and death is often the hardest period for families. Your EPA attorney may be managing your finances and care costs for months or years before death triggers estate administration. If the same person serves as both EPA attorney and executor, the transition is smoother. If different people hold these roles, coordination becomes essential.

The Manitoba End-of-Life Planning Checklist

A complete plan includes:

1. A health care directive naming a proxy, with treatment preferences specific enough to guide Goals of Care conversations
2. An Enduring Power of Attorney with the statutory enduring clause and proper witnessing
3. A current will naming an executor and specifying asset distribution
4. Updated beneficiary designations on all registered accounts and insurance policies
5. An ERIK kit on your refrigerator with a copy of your directive
6. Copies of your directive distributed to your proxy, family physician, and hospital registry
7. A distribution log tracking who has which version of each document
8. Organ donation registration at signupforlife.ca

The Manitoba Advance Directive & Living Will Kit covers the medical and financial planning components — directive worksheets, EPA setup checklist, Goals of Care reference, ERIK assembly guide, and document distribution tracker — in one integrated package. It's designed to work alongside your will and estate planning, bridging the gap between what a lawyer handles and what the clinical system expects.

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