Wisconsin Power of Attorney Form: Which Form You Need and How to Execute It Correctly

Searching for "the Wisconsin power of attorney form" trips up thousands of people every year, because there is no single form. Wisconsin law splits the job across two separate statutory documents, each with its own signing rules — and using the wrong execution process is the most common way families end up with a worthless piece of paper.

The Two Official Forms

Both forms are published free by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services:

Form F-00036 — Power of Attorney for Finances and Property (Chapter 244). Names an agent to handle bank accounts, bills, real estate, taxes, investments, and business matters. Durable by default: it keeps working if you later lose capacity, unless you write in that it should not.

Form F-00085 — Power of Attorney for Health Care (Chapter 155). Names a health care agent to make medical decisions if two physicians certify in writing that you cannot make them yourself. It never covers money, and the financial form never covers medicine.

There is also a third related document, Form F-00086 (Authorization for Final Disposition), which names who controls your funeral, burial, or cremation after death — worth knowing about, but it is not a power of attorney.

How to Execute the Financial Form (F-00036)

1. Fill in your agent and at least one successor agent.
2. Review the authority grants. Standard powers cover banking, real estate, taxes, and personal property. The "hot powers" under § 244.41 — making gifts, creating or changing trusts, changing beneficiary designations or survivorship rights, delegating authority — are not included by default and must be explicitly granted in Special Instructions.
3. Sign it yourself, or have an adult sign at your direction in your physical presence.
4. Get it notarized. A notary is not strictly required for validity, but under § 244.05 a notarized signature is legally presumed genuine — the practical difference between a bank accepting your document and rejecting it.
5. If real estate transactions are possible, record the POA with the Register of Deeds in the county where the property sits (flat $30 recording fee, with a 3x3-inch blank space required in the upper right corner). A conveyance signed by an agent is ineffective without a recorded instrument under § 706.03.

Remote signing via two-way audiovisual technology is permitted under § 244.05(3), but it must be supervised by a licensed Wisconsin attorney who attaches a compliance affidavit — for most people, in-person notarization is simpler.

How to Execute the Healthcare Form (F-00085)

The rules here are stricter, and different — no notary at all:

1. Name your health care agent and an alternate.
2. Add your treatment preferences in the Special Instructions section.
3. Sign in the presence of two disinterested adult witnesses. Under § 155.10(2), witnesses cannot be related to you by blood, marriage, or adoption; cannot stand to inherit from you; cannot be your named agent; and cannot be your treating healthcare provider or their staff (chaplains and social workers are the exception).

Executing this form in a hospital room in front of your kids is the classic mistake — relatives are disqualified witnesses, and the document can be void on its face. Our Wisconsin healthcare power of attorney post covers the witness rules in full.

The Errors That Void These Forms

• Witness problems on the healthcare form — relatives, heirs, or treating staff as witnesses.
• No notary on the financial form — technically valid, practically fragile; banks push back on unacknowledged signatures.
• Missing Special Instructions — assuming the agent can gift assets or change beneficiaries when those powers were never initialed or written in.
• Stale third-party templates — forms from national websites that don't track Wisconsin's Chapter 244 statutory language.
• Assuming one form does both jobs — it never does.

Free Forms vs a Guided Kit

The DHS forms are genuinely free and legally sound — what they don't come with is the manual. No explanation of hot powers, no witness audit, no guidance on recording for real estate, no bank-acceptance protocol. That is the gap the Wisconsin Power of Attorney Kit fills: both statutory forms plus line-by-line execution instructions, a witness qualification checklist, Special Instructions language for the powers families actually need, and the steps to get banks and hospitals to accept the finished documents before a crisis hits.

Download the forms, but execute them like the stakes are real — because they are.

See more Wisconsin guides →