Register Advance Personal Plan PGT Darwin: The Full Process

You have signed your Advance Personal Plan in front of an authorised witness. The document is legally valid. But unless you register it with the Public Guardian and Trustee, the people who most need to find it in an emergency — hospital staff, paramedics, aged care workers — may never know it exists.

Why PGT Registration Matters

Registration with the PGT places your APP on a central database that health services can access when you are admitted to hospital or treated in an emergency. Without registration, your decision-makers may need to locate and present a certified copy of the document to each institution that needs to see it. In a sudden stroke or accident, that may not happen fast enough.

PGT registration is voluntary. You are not legally required to do it. But it is free, and the consequences of not doing it — a hospital following the statutory healthcare hierarchy instead of your chosen decision-maker, or making treatment decisions without your binding Advance Consent Decisions on file — make it one of the most worthwhile steps in the entire APP process.

What to Submit

To register your APP with the PGT, you need:

1. The original executed APP (signed by you and certified by the authorised witness)
2. A completed Application to Register form (available from the PGT website at pgt.nt.gov.au)

You can submit these by mail or deliver them in person to the PGT office in Darwin. The PGT scans the document into their central database and returns the original to you.

PGT vs LTO Registration

The NT uses a dual-registration system, and the two pathways serve completely different purposes:

If your decision-maker needs to use the APP for property, LTO registration is required; PGT registration remains voluntary and serves healthcare and emergency access. PGT registration alone does not give your decision-maker the legal standing to sign land transfer forms.

The Registration Most People Forget

Families commonly register with the PGT — the free, straightforward pathway — and assume they are fully covered. The gap appears months or years later when the decision-maker needs to sell the family home to fund aged care and discovers the APP was never lodged with the Land Titles Office. At that point, if the maker still has capacity, the LTO registration is straightforward. If the maker has already lost capacity, the decision-maker must register the original APP and pay the fee before any property transaction can proceed.

If the original APP has been lost and the maker lacks capacity, the situation becomes significantly more difficult. The decision-maker may need to apply to NTCAT for a formal order confirming the plan's existence.

After Registration

Once registered, notify your decision-makers and close family members that the APP is on the PGT database. Give certified copies to your GP, your aged care provider if applicable, and your bank (though for banking purposes, consider the split-document strategy covered in the Northern Territory Power of Attorney Kit to avoid compliance delays).

Store the original document in a secure but accessible location — a fireproof safe at home, not a safety deposit box that your decision-maker cannot open without your presence.

For a complete registration walkthrough — including the LTO filing process and the specific paper requirements that trip up most families — the NT Power of Attorney Kit covers both pathways step by step.

See more Northern Territory guides →