Enduring Power of Attorney: How Hong Kong Registers It

What an enduring power of attorney does that an ordinary one does not

An ordinary power of attorney under the Powers of Attorney Ordinance (Cap. 31) is a useful instrument with one fatal limitation for an ageing parent: it stops working when the donor loses the mental capacity to ratify it. That is precisely the moment a family needs it. A bank that has been accepting instructions from a daughter under an ordinary power will refuse them the week after a dementia diagnosis, and the family is left applying to the court for someone to be appointed.

The Enduring Powers of Attorney Ordinance (Cap. 501) exists to close that gap. It allows a person, while mentally capable, to create a power that continues — or comes into effect — after they become mentally incapable, and it confines that power to property and financial affairs. Banking, the flat, the bills, the insurance, the share portfolio: those are the subjects. It is not a document about medical treatment, and it is not a will.

The distinction is worth stating in the order families usually meet it. First the parent loses the ability to manage money. Then someone discovers that the bank will not speak to them. Then a solicitor is asked whether a power of attorney can be signed now, and the answer is that it cannot — the donor must have capacity at the time of signing. The EPA is the one document in this set that has to be made early or not at all.

How it is signed: the doctor, the solicitor, and 28 days

The instrument must be in the prescribed form: Form 1 where one attorney is appointed, Form 2 where more than one is, under the Enduring Powers of Attorney (Prescribed Form) Regulation (Cap. 501A). The donor signs twice, once in the presence of a registered medical practitioner and once in the presence of a solicitor, and the practitioner's role is to certify the donor's mental capacity at that moment. This is the part families underestimate: the medical certificate is not a formality, and a doctor who has not seen the person recently is being asked to make a judgement about capacity, not about general health.

The two signatures can happen on the same day, and that is the better arrangement. Where they cannot, section 5(2)(a) allows the donor to sign before the solicitor within 28 days after signing before the medical practitioner — and until the solicitor's signature is in place, the document is not an executed EPA at all. It is a few pages of paper, which is exactly what it will be treated as if the donor loses capacity in the interval.

Where the donor is mentally capable but physically unable to sign, section 5(2)(b) allows someone else to sign on the donor's behalf, in the donor's presence and under the donor's direction. That person cannot be the attorney, the attorney's spouse, the medical practitioner or the solicitor before whom the instrument is signed, or their spouses. The exclusion list is there to stop the person who benefits from being the person who signs.

Registration at the High Court, and what it costs

An EPA that has been signed but not registered cannot be used. Registration is made under section 9 of Cap. 501 and the Enduring Powers of Attorney (Registration) Rules (Cap. 4E), by written application to the Registrar of the High Court. The application bundle is specific: a covering letter naming the donor and each attorney with addresses, and stating whether any variations have been made to clauses 2 and 3 of Part A of Form 1 or clauses 3 and 4 of Part A of Form 2; the original instrument and a certified copy; and copies of the practising certificates of both the solicitor and the registered medical practitioner who witnessed the donor's execution.

Two details trip people up. The practising certificates have to cover the date the instrument was executed — an application lodged with certificates that expired before the signing date will not be accepted. And since 6 July 2026, whether or not the applicant is legally represented, an appointment at the High Court Registry must be booked in advance through the Judiciary's e-Appointment System; the documents are lodged in person at Room LG158, Counter 4, LG1, High Court Building, 38 Queensway.

The fee is HK$440, prescribed in the First Schedule to the High Court Fees Rules (Cap. 4D), paid at the Accounts Office on LG2. Once the requirements are met and the Registrar grants leave, the instrument is registered and the Registry issues a letter to the donor confirming the registration and giving its date and number. The Judiciary publishes the current procedure and fee on its EPA registration page, and that page, not this article, is the version to work from on the day.

The will, the enduring power of attorney, and the other documents in the set

Four documents are routinely confused with one another, and the confusion costs families time at exactly the wrong moment. The table sets out what each one covers, when it starts, and who has to sign it.

The fourth row is the one people assume is covered by the first. It is not. An EPA has nothing to say about whether a feeding tube is inserted or a resuscitation is attempted; those are clinical decisions, taken by the doctor in consultation with the family, and an advance directive is the document that records what the person wanted. Hong Kong has no statutory enduring power covering personal care, which is why the advance directive remains a statement of wishes rather than a binding instruction.

The practical consequence is that a family needs both, and they are made with different people. The EPA is made with a solicitor and a doctor. The will is made with a solicitor. The advance directive is usually a conversation with a doctor, written down. The Hong Kong will covers the second of those.

Fees, and the doctor question

There is no fixed fee for making an EPA, because there is no statutory scale for the drafting, the medical assessment or the solicitor's attendance. What a family pays is a matter of agreement with each professional, and the honest way to compare quotes is to ask what each one includes: the drafting, attendance at the signing, the capacity assessment, and help with the registration bundle are four separate pieces of work, and a quote that covers only the first is not comparable with one that covers all four.

The court fee is the one fixed number in the process: HK$440 at the High Court. Everything else varies.

There is no official list of doctors for an EPA, and a family should be wary of anyone who offers one. What the Ordinance requires is a registered medical practitioner who examines the donor and certifies capacity at the time of signing. In practice that is often the family doctor, who knows the person, or a doctor arranged by the solicitor. A doctor who has never met the donor can still certify, but the certification carries less weight if it is ever challenged — and an EPA is most likely to be challenged by the one relative who did not want it made.

What goes wrong, and how to avoid it

The most common failure is an EPA that was signed and never registered. It sits in a drawer looking official, and when it is finally needed the family discovers that the attorney has no authority to do anything. The second most common is an attorney who starts using it before registration, which is the same problem with worse consequences — transactions may have to be unwound.

The third is the choice of attorney. Appointing two attorneys to act jointly sounds like a safeguard and often becomes a deadlock, because both must sign every instruction and one of them may be the person the other no longer speaks to. Jointly and severally, or one attorney with a named substitute, is usually the more workable arrangement. And the attorney should be someone who will still be alive, contactable and willing in ten years, which rules out the sibling who is already managing three other crises.

The fourth is storage. The registered instrument should be kept where the attorney can produce it quickly — the original, not a photograph — and the family should know it exists before the week it is needed. An EPA that nobody mentions until the bank asks for it has wasted the years it spent being valid.

What the attorney is not is a substitute for accounting. An attorney dealing with someone else's money should keep records of what was spent and why, because the donor may recover, the donor's estate will eventually be administered, and the other members of the family will ask. The document that gives the power does not remove the obligation to explain it. Where the family is also keeping a day-to-day care record, what a caregiver app should record is about the other half of the same file.