Can Your Attorney for Personal Care Refuse Life-Sustaining Treatment on Your Behalf in Ontario?

If you've named an Attorney for Personal Care, you may wonder exactly how far that authority goes — specifically, whether your attorney can refuse life-sustaining treatment on your behalf if you're ever found incapable of deciding for yourself. This is one of the most consequential powers a personal care document can involve, and it's worth understanding both what the attorney can genuinely do and where the real limits sit.

Ontario law does give an attorney this kind of authority in principle. But it operates within a decision-making framework, not as open-ended personal discretion.

This article explains how that framework applies to a treatment decision, and what happens when there's no clear guidance to work from.

The Authority Exists — Within a Framework, Not as Free Discretion

Personal care decisions, including consenting to or refusing treatment, are among the things a Power of Attorney for Personal Care can cover once it actually takes effect — meaning once the person has been found incapable of that specific decision, not simply because a diagnosis exists.

Even once it's in effect, the attorney doesn't decide based purely on their own view. They follow the same two-step approach used for any personal care decision: known prior wishes first, and only then, if no applicable wish is known, the person's best interests.

What "Known Prior Wishes" Looks Like in a Treatment Decision

If the person, while capable, clearly expressed a wish about a specific kind of treatment — for example, saying they would not want to be kept on a ventilator in certain circumstances — and that wish applies to the situation at hand, the attorney is generally expected to follow it, including where that means refusing or withdrawing treatment.

General, vague statements ("I don't want to suffer") are harder to apply directly than specific ones. That's one reason discussing your actual wishes clearly with your attorney, and putting them in writing where possible, matters far more than simply naming someone to the role.

What Happens When There's No Clear Prior Wish

Without an applicable known wish, the attorney applies the same best-interests factors used elsewhere in personal care decision-making — weighing whether treatment is likely to help, the risk involved, and the person's known values — rather than defaulting automatically to "everything possible" or "nothing further."

Where This Authority Has Real Limits

• The document itself can restrict or expand what's authorized. The specific wording of a Power of Attorney for Personal Care matters — it isn't a one-size-fits-all grant of authority.
• Health care providers work within their own consent framework. Treatment decisions involve a separate legal framework specific to health care consent, distinct from wills and estates law.
• Disagreements have their own review process. If an attorney and a care team disagree about a treatment decision, that disagreement is generally worked through under that separate framework, alongside the person's care team — not through estate law.

Why This Belongs in the Same Conversation as Your Will

Clients often draft their will, Power of Attorney for Property, and Power of Attorney for Personal Care together because they're part of the same overall plan, even though the personal care document deals with fundamentally different decisions than a will does.

Putting Your Wishes in Writing Helps More Than the Appointment Itself

The single most useful thing most people can do isn't choosing the "right" attorney — it's making sure that person actually knows what you want. A written statement of wishes, discussed openly with your attorney and kept alongside your Power of Attorney for Personal Care, gives them something concrete to work from instead of guessing at what you would have wanted under pressure and without warning.

Frequently asked questions