Donor and Donee in a Power of Attorney: The 2026 Malaysian Guide

Two words trip up almost everyone who walks in asking about a Power of Attorney: donor and donee. They sound like they belong to organ donation, and people routinely get them the wrong way round.

So, plainly:

• The donor is the one who gives the power. Your father, if he is the one who owns the house.
• The donee is the one who receives it. The son or daughter who will sign, collect, deal.

The donor keeps ownership of everything. The donee is not given the property; the donee is given permission to act. Think of it as an agency: the donee acts for the donor, within the four corners of what the document says, and no further.

Get that right and the rest of this page makes sense.

Which law applies

In Peninsular Malaysia, the governing statute is the Powers of Attorney Act 1949 (Act 424). Section 1(2) limits it to the States of West Malaysia, so Sabah and Sarawak follow their own position — worth knowing if your family or the property sits in East Malaysia.

Two practical requirements matter more than anything else in the Act:

1. Deposit it in the High Court. Under section 4, a Power of Attorney is deposited in the High Court and given a registration number. In practice, an undeposited PA gets refused at the land office and at the banks. People are often shocked by this — they have a signed document, a lawyer’s stamp, and still cannot use it.
2. The donor must have capacity when signing. A PA grants authority. Someone who no longer understands what he is granting cannot grant it.

What people actually use a PA for

For individuals:

• Selling or buying property. The donee signs the sale and purchase agreement, the memorandum of transfer, the perfection of title documents.
• Collecting rental income on the donor’s properties.
• Bank dealings. Banking secrecy means a bank will usually not let even a spouse or child near an account without a properly deposited PA in place.
• Managing affairs during a long absence — the donor is working or living overseas and something needs signing here.

For companies:

• Landowner and developer. The landowner grants a PA to the developer to deal with the land, and takes an agreed share of the completed units in return. This is one of the few situations where an irrevocable PA genuinely belongs, and we will come back to why.
• Company to employee, limited to a defined purpose such as operating a particular banking facility.

The mistake that costs families the most

Here is the misunderstanding we correct most often, and it is worth being blunt about.

A Power of Attorney in Malaysia is revoked when the donor is adjudged of unsound mind. That is section 5 of the Act. The document you signed precisely so that somebody could take over “if anything happens to me” is at its weakest at the exact moment you were relying on it.

Malaysia has no Lasting Power of Attorney and no Enduring Power of Attorney of the kind England and Singapore have — those are creatures of statutes we simply do not have here. Anyone telling you that an irrevocable PA is the Malaysian version of an LPA is mistaken, and the mistake is expensive.

An irrevocable PA under section 6 survives the donor’s death, incapacity or bankruptcy only where it is expressed to be irrevocable and given for valuable consideration. That is a commercial protection, built for the developer, the financier and the purchaser who need a deal to remain enforceable. A father granting a PA to his daughter out of love and trust does not fit inside it.

If your real concern is “what happens when Dad’s memory goes”, a PA is not your answer. A trust is the instrument that survives incapacity. And if capacity is already gone, you are looking at a court application under the Mental Health Act 2001 — see our note on dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Who can be a donor

The donor must:

• be of sound mind;
• be at least 18 years old;
• sign freely, without pressure from anybody standing behind him;
• actually hold the power he is trying to give away. An administrator who has not yet extracted the letters of administration, for example, has nothing yet to delegate.

That last one catches families in the middle of an estate. You cannot grant a PA over assets you do not yet legally control.

Revocable and irrevocable, in plain terms

Revocable is the ordinary case. The donor can cancel it at any time — which matters, because if a donee starts acting outside his mandate, the donor needs a way to shut the door.

Irrevocable is the commercial exception described above: expressed to be irrevocable, supported by valuable consideration, and used where a counterparty needs certainty that the authority will not evaporate.

How a PA comes to an end

A Power of Attorney can end when:

• the donor revokes it;
• the donor or donee dies;
• the donor is adjudged of unsound mind (section 5) — the one everybody forgets;
• the donee becomes of unsound mind, or bankrupt, so that he can no longer properly act.

In practice, revocation is done by filing a Deed of Revocation in court, signed by the donor. If it is the donee who wants out, the instrument is a Deed of Renunciation. Both go through the High Court’s e-filing system.

Getting it right

A Power of Attorney is a short document that carries a lot of weight. The recurring problems we see are not exotic — they are the same four every time: never deposited in court, drafted too narrowly to cover the transaction actually needed, signed by a donor whose capacity was already questionable, or relied on after incapacity when it no longer had any force.

If you are preparing one, or you are holding a PA and are not sure it still works, speak to us before you commit to a transaction that depends on it.

Related reading: Power of Attorney vs guardian ad litem, when a parent has dementia, and mental health orders.