PEI Power of Attorney Cost

Lawyer-Drafted POA

Having a PEI estate planning lawyer draft a power of attorney typically costs $600 to $1,000 or more, depending on complexity. A straightforward enduring POA for a single individual sits at the lower end. Adding a personal directive, a health care directive, coordinating documents for a couple, or addressing non-standard situations (blended families, business assets, cross-jurisdictional property) pushes the cost higher.

PEI's pool of estate planning lawyers is concentrated in Charlottetown and Summerside. Rural families in Kings or Prince County face additional costs — travel time, lost workdays, and the weeks-long scheduling backlog that comes with limited supply and steady demand.

For complex estates (corporate shares, properties in multiple provinces, trust structures), professional drafting is worth the cost. The lawyer brings strategic expertise that a template cannot replicate.

DIY and Online Options

On the opposite end of the spectrum, PEI residents can draft their own POA using the statutory forms published in the regulations of the Powers of Attorney and Personal Directives Act. Forms 1 (Simple POA), 2 (Detailed POA), and 3 (Personal Directive) are publicly available at no cost. The document itself has no government filing fee.

The catch: these statutory forms are raw, unformatted text with no explanatory context. They do not explain how to draft custom conditions, how to set a springing trigger properly, or how to coordinate between a financial POA and a personal directive. A misstep in the Section 32 witnessing rules — asking the wrong person to witness — invalidates the entire document.

National online will platforms (Willful, Epilogue, LawDepot) offer province-specific POA templates for roughly $49 to $199. These platforms provide a better user interface than raw statutory forms but generally stop at document generation. They do not cover what happens after you sign: dealing with bank rejections, satisfying service provider verification under Sections 18 and 29 of the Act, or navigating the capacity assessment process that activates a springing POA.

Registry and Administrative Costs

The POA document itself costs nothing to execute. But related administrative costs add up:

• Registry of Deeds registration (required for real estate transactions): $77.25 per document
• Certified copy of a registered document: $25.75 each
• Notary or commissioner fee for the affidavit of execution: varies, typically $25–$75
• Capacity assessment (for activating a springing POA): depends on the practitioner; some family doctors perform these as part of regular care, while others charge a separate fee

The Cost of Not Having One

The most expensive outcome is doing nothing. If a parent loses capacity without a POA, the family's only option is applying for a court-ordered trusteeship under the Adult Guardianship and Trusteeship Act. That process involves:

• A capacity assessment (required before the court will hear the application)
• Legal fees for preparing and filing the court application
• The 30-day notice period for served parties to respond
• Ongoing supervision by the Prothonotary, with mandatory financial reporting and audits

If no family member can serve as trustee, the Public Guardian and Trustee takes over, charging annual management fees from $100 to $10,000 depending on the estate's value, plus $100 per estate tax return, $30 per personal tax return, and a $100 file-closing fee.

A court trusteeship easily costs thousands of dollars over its lifetime — fees that an enduring POA, signed during a single afternoon, would have prevented entirely.

The Discontinued CLI Kits

Before November 1, 2025, Community Legal Information (CLI) PEI sold low-cost paper POA kits that were the go-to resource for budget-conscious families. CLI withdrew those kits when the new Act came into force because the legacy forms no longer complied with the updated execution rules. The CLI website now directs residents to seek professional legal counsel — routing them toward the $600+ lawyer path.

This withdrawal created a gap in the market. Families who cannot afford a lawyer and do not trust generic online templates need a PEI-specific resource that covers both the document creation and the post-signing execution process under the active 2025/2026 laws.

The Prince Edward Island Power of Attorney Kit fills that gap — step-by-step drafting guidance for all three PEI instruments, Section 32 compliance protocols, and service provider verification templates, at a fraction of lawyer fees.

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