Joint Power of Attorney in BC: Naming More Than One Attorney

Many BC families want to name two people as attorney — often two siblings — so no one feels left out and no one holds sole control. It is a reasonable instinct. But how you word that appointment decides whether your finances keep running smoothly or seize up the first time your attorneys disagree.

Naming more than one attorney in an Enduring Power of Attorney is allowed under BC's Power of Attorney Act. The catch is a single clause most people never think about: whether the attorneys must act jointly or jointly and severally. That one phrase changes everything about how the document works day to day.

Jointly vs jointly and severally

There are two ways multiple attorneys can be authorized to act, and your EPoA must state which one applies.

Jointly means every attorney must agree and sign for any decision. Two siblings named jointly cannot pay a single bill unless both sign off. This gives you maximum oversight — no one acts alone — but it is slow, and it depends entirely on the attorneys being available and in agreement.

Jointly and severally means any one attorney can act alone. Either sibling can pay a bill, manage an account, or deal with the bank without waiting for the other. This is far more practical, especially if one attorney travels, lives out of province, or is simply hard to reach in an emergency.

If your document is silent on this point, you cannot assume the convenient interpretation. State it explicitly.

The deadlock trap

The most common — and most expensive — mistake is naming two attorneys jointly with no way to break a tie.

Two adult children named jointly, who then disagree about whether to sell the family home or which care facility to choose, produce a legal deadlock. Neither can act without the other, and neither will budge. The bank freezes. Nothing moves. The only way out can be a court application to sort out the impasse — the exact costly, slow process an Enduring Power of Attorney exists to avoid.

If you want two attorneys to share control, build in a dispute-resolution mechanism: a named tiebreaker, a rule that a majority governs if you name three, or a fallback that one attorney's decision prevails on defined matters. Joint-only appointments with no tiebreaker are a trap.

Practical guidance for choosing

A few principles keep multiple-attorney appointments from backfiring:

• For most families, "jointly and severally" is the practical default. It keeps your affairs moving even when one attorney is unavailable, while still giving you two sets of hands you trust.
• If you genuinely want dual sign-off, add a tiebreaker. Do not name two people jointly and hope they always agree. Plan for the day they do not.
• Consider naming one primary attorney and one alternate instead. Rather than two people sharing power at once, you can name one attorney to act, with a second who steps in only if the first cannot. This sidesteps the joint-versus-several question entirely and is often cleaner. BC law lets you name alternates, and you should — for every appointment.
• Always ask each person first. Someone who first learns of their appointment during a crisis may decline, leaving you with no one able to act.

The same choice applies to Representation Agreements for healthcare. If you name two representatives, decide whether they act together or independently, and name at least one alternate.

Get the wording right before you sign

Multiple-attorney clauses are precisely the kind of detail that looks fine on a free template and then fails in a bank branch or a family conflict. Once the adult loses capacity, none of it can be corrected. See common power of attorney mistakes in BC for the other clauses that quietly break documents.

Our British Columbia Power of Attorney Kit walks you through the exact clauses an EPoA needs — including how to name more than one attorney without building in a deadlock — so your document works the first time it is used, not after a court sorts it out.

See more British Columbia guides →