I’m in Ontario, Canada, so I know one size doesn’t fit all.
Here’s the thing, I’ve been separated from my wife for, what, 5 or 6 years now, but not officially divorced. Yeah, yeah, I know…
In the last year or so she’s been admitted to hospital with congestive heart failure four or five times. She’s 55 years old and smokes, and doesn’t really take care of herself. She had two brothers die of heart failure at 56 and 63 years old.
Anyway, the point is that she’s in ICU right now with another case of what I assume is the same. If she dies, am I automatically granted power of attorney?
Do I need to see a lawyer (which I can’t afford)? Can we do something by letter, or email, or text, that would be appropriate evidence that I have power of attorney privileges?
Being separated, she may not even agree to this. I have two kids 20, and 21. Could she designated one of them as POA? How does this work? I’m assuming the laws in most common-law jurisdictions would be fairly similar.
I’m not sure that “power of attorney” means what you think it means. In fact, I’m not sure what you think it means.
There may be some special usage or practice iin Ontario that I’m familiar with but, in general, dead people don’t have attorneys. If your wife dies, nobody will have power of attorney from her.
Are you asking if will be her legal personal represenative for the purposes of administering her estate? That will depend on whether she has made a will or not and, if she has, on what the will says.
Ah, OK, that may be something specific to Ontario. In general, you appoint an attorney to deal with your property on your behalf while you are alive. You can revoke the appointment at any time (except in limited cases) and it is revoked automatically by your death. The person who deals with your property after your death is various called your legal personal representative, your executor, the administrator of your estate, your estate trustee, or some such term.
Unless the law of Ontario is unusual, if your wife has made no will (and therefore has not appointed an executor) if you are still married at the date of her death, and not separated by court order or some other legally-effective process, then you will be her next-of-kin, and will have a greater right than anyone else to apply for probate of her estate (meaning, to apply to be appointed to administer her estate - collect her assets, settle her debts and distribute whatever is left to those entitled). If you don’t want to do it, and someone more distantly related wants to to it instead, they’ll need to get you to to agree to them being appointed.
A separate question is whether you will inherit any or all of your wife’s estate, if you are still married when she dies and if she makes no will. There’s a sporting chance that you would, based on the rules that apply in a lot of places, but I don’t know about Ontario specifically, so you might want to look into this.