A welfare guardian makes personal care and welfare decisions for someone who has lost capacity, such as where they live and what medical treatment they receive.
A property manager makes financial and property decisions, such as paying bills, managing bank accounts and selling assets.
They are two separate Family Court orders under the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988, and many families need both.
The two orders have different legal tests, different powers and very different levels of oversight, so applying for the wrong one costs your family time at the point when it can least afford delay.
This article sets out exactly what each role can and can’t decide, so you leave knowing which application to make.
What Is the Difference Between a Welfare Guardian and a Property Manager?
The core difference is subject matter: a welfare guardian decides about the person, and a property manager decides about the person’s money and assets.
A welfare guardian has no authority to touch a bank account, and a property manager has no authority to decide where someone lives or what treatment they receive.
Both roles are created by the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988, often shortened to the PPPR Act, and both are appointed by the Family Court.
The table below compares the two orders across the points that decide which application you need.
| Welfare Guardian | Property Manager | |
| What it covers | Personal care and welfare: living arrangements, medical treatment, daily care, services | Money and assets: bank accounts, bills, tax, investments, land, business interests |
| Capacity test | The person “wholly lacks the capacity” to make or communicate decisions about that aspect of their care (s 12(2)) | The person “lacks wholly or partly the competence” to manage their own property affairs (s 25) |
| Who can be appointed | An individual aged 20 or over. No company or organisation can hold the role (s 12(4)) | An individual aged 20 or over, or a trustee corporation such as Public Trust (s 31) |
| Core duty | Promote and protect the person’s welfare and best interests (s 18(3)) | Use the property to promote and protect the person’s best interests (s 36) |
| Hard limits | Can’t decide on marriage, divorce or adoption, refuse life-saving treatment, or consent to ECT (s 18(1)) | Can’t sell or exchange land worth more than $120,000 without the court’s consent, and needs court approval to invest unless investing under the Trusts Act 2019 (Schedule 1) |
| First review | Not later than 3 years from the order (s 12(8)) | Not later than 3 years from the order (s 31(8)) |
| Temporary order | Up to 6 months | Up to 3 months |
| Accounting to the court | No routine financial statements required | Statement within 3 months, then annually. Statements filed by a manager who isn’t a trustee corporation are examined by Public Trust (ss 45 and 46) |
| Liability | Liable if they acted in bad faith or without reasonable care (s 20) | Liable if they acted in bad faith or without reasonable care (s 49) |
| Payment | Reasonable expenses paid from the person’s property, with no entitlement to be paid for their time (s 21) | Expenses paid from the person’s property, and no remuneration unless the court directs (s 50) |
The most important line in that table is the capacity test, because it’s the reason many families qualify for one order but not the other.
The property test is easier to satisfy than the welfare test, because a property order can be made where competence is only partly lost while a welfare guardian order needs a complete loss of capacity on the relevant issue.
That difference explains why a person with early dementia may well need a property manager while still being able to make their own decisions about care.
What Decisions Can a Welfare Guardian Make?
A welfare guardian decides the personal care and welfare matters that the Family Court specifically gives them, most commonly where the person lives, what medical and dental treatment they receive, and what care, education or rehabilitation services they use.
The court doesn’t hand over blanket authority.
Section 18 makes the appointment specific to the “particular aspect or particular aspects” of welfare set out in the order, so a guardian appointed only for accommodation decisions has no power over medical consent.
Under section 18(3), the guardian’s first and paramount consideration must be promoting and protecting the person’s welfare and best interests.
Section 18(4) then requires the guardian to encourage the person to act for themselves as far as possible, to help them stay part of their community, and to consult the person and others who care about them before deciding.
In practice this means a guardian who moves a parent into care without discussing it with the parent, or with the people best placed to advise on that parent’s care, isn’t just being insensitive, they’re falling short of a statutory duty.
What Is a Welfare Guardian Never Allowed to Decide?
Section 18(1) puts seven decisions permanently beyond a welfare guardian’s reach, and the court can’t grant these powers even if everyone agrees.
A welfare guardian can never:
- Make any decision about the person entering into or dissolving a marriage or civil union
- Make any decision about the adoption of the person’s child
- Refuse consent to standard medical treatment intended to save the person’s life or prevent serious damage to their health
- Consent to electro-convulsive treatment
- Consent to surgery or treatment designed to destroy part of the brain or a brain function in order to change behaviour
- Consent to the person taking part in a medical experiment, unless it’s to save their life or prevent serious damage to their health
- Request assisted dying on the person’s behalf under the End of Life Choice Act 2019
These limits matter most in hospital settings.
Families sometimes assume a welfare guardian order gives them the final word on withdrawing treatment, and it doesn’t.
Where the order covers medical decisions, the guardian can consent to treatment and can decline treatment that isn’t life-saving, but they can’t block standard life-saving care.
What Financial Decisions Can a Property Manager Make?
A property manager can do the everyday financial work the person can no longer do, including operating bank accounts, paying bills and rest home fees, collecting income and rent, filing tax returns, dealing with KiwiSaver and investments, and running or winding up a business interest.
The manager’s exact powers come from the property order itself.
Section 38(1) says a manager has “all such rights and powers as the court may confer on the manager in the property order, subject to any restrictions specified by the court in the order.”
Schedule 1 of the PPPR Act sets out the powers the court may confer, and section 36 sets the overriding duty: the manager’s first and paramount consideration must be to use the property in the person’s best interests, while encouraging them to exercise whatever financial competence they still have.
That second half of section 36 is often overlooked.
A manager who takes over every account and leaves the person with no spending money of their own is likely to be breaching their duty, even if every transaction is otherwise sensible.
When Does a Property Manager Need the Court’s Permission?
A property manager must go back to the Family Court before selling or exchanging land worth more than what Schedule 1 calls the “specified sum”, which is currently $120,000.
The same threshold applies to buying a home for the person, to spending more than that amount for any one purpose, and to granting a lease with an option to purchase over property of that value.
Investing the person’s money needs the prior approval of the court, with one exception: clause 1(c) of Schedule 1 says that approval isn’t necessary where the money is invested in accordance with the Trusts Act 2019.
There’s also a smaller cap on general expenditure under Schedule 1: a manager can’t spend more than $5,000 in aggregate over any twelve month period under that particular power without the court’s consent.
Because almost every family home in New Zealand is worth well over $120,000, selling the home is nearly always a court application rather than a decision the manager can make alone.
That’s a deliberate safeguard, and it’s one of the strongest practical protections in the whole Act.
Why Are the Capacity Tests Different for Each Order?
The welfare guardian test is significantly harder to meet than the property test, and the difference is written into the statute.
For a welfare guardian, section 12(2) says the court must be satisfied of two things: that the person “wholly lacks the capacity to make or to communicate decisions” relating to the relevant aspects of their personal care and welfare, and that appointing a welfare guardian “is the only satisfactory way to ensure that appropriate decisions are made.”
For a property manager, section 25 sets a lower bar. The court needs to be satisfied that the person “lacks wholly or partly the competence to manage his or her own affairs in relation to his or her property.”
The words “wholly or partly” do a lot of work there.
Partial loss of financial competence is enough for a property order, while nothing short of a complete loss of capacity on a specific welfare question will support a welfare guardian appointment.
Both applications also run into the primary objectives in sections 8 and 28, which require the court to make “the least restrictive intervention possible” and to help the person exercise and develop whatever capacity they still have.
Those objectives are the reason the court will sometimes make a narrow personal order about one issue instead of appointing a welfare guardian, or appoint a manager over one account rather than the whole estate.
Every application needs a medical report addressing capacity, and the report needs to speak to the right test.
A doctor’s letter saying someone “has dementia and can’t cope” won’t satisfy section 12(2), because the question isn’t the diagnosis, it’s whether the person wholly lacks capacity on the specific welfare decisions in issue.
Who Can Be Appointed to Each Role?
A welfare guardian must be an individual aged 20 or over, and section 12(4) states that no body corporate can be appointed, so a company, charity or trustee corporation can’t hold the role.
A property manager must also be aged 20 or over, but section 31 allows a trustee corporation such as Public Trust or Te Tumu Paeroa to be appointed, which is common where there’s no suitable family member or where the finances are complex.
Section 31 also blocks the superintendent, licensee, supervisor or person in charge of a hospital, home or other institution from being appointed manager for a resident or patient, which removes an obvious conflict of interest.
Before appointing a welfare guardian, section 12(5) requires the court to be satisfied the proposed appointee is capable of carrying out the duties, will act in the person’s best interests, is unlikely to have any conflict of interest with them, and consents to the appointment.
The court will also, so far as practicable, ascertain the wishes of the person themselves about who should be appointed.
The court can appoint more than one welfare guardian, but only if that’s in the person’s best interests, and multiple guardians must regularly consult each other.
This is where family dynamics get tested.
If two siblings apply against each other, the court is entitled to appoint neither and instead appoint an independent person or a trustee corporation over the property.
Do You Need Both Orders, or Just One?
Many families dealing with advanced dementia or a serious brain injury need both orders, because a loss of capacity often affects care decisions and financial decisions at the same time.
You need a welfare guardian if the decisions in dispute are about care: which rest home, whether to accept a treatment, what services to arrange.
You need a property manager if the decisions are about money: the mortgage isn’t being paid, the rest home fees can’t be authorised, the house needs to be sold, or the person is being financially taken advantage of.
If both are true, you can file both applications at the same time in the same court, and the same medical assessment can often cover both. The report still has to address each test separately, because evidence that satisfies the property test won’t automatically satisfy the higher welfare guardian test.
There’s a narrower situation worth knowing about.
Where a person still handles their own care well but has lost mental capacity to manage their finances, a property order alone is often the right call, and it avoids stripping away personal autonomy that hasn’t actually been lost.
The reverse also happens: someone with a severe intellectual disability may need a welfare guardian for care decisions while their modest assets can be handled by a simpler order.
Is There a Simpler Option for Small Amounts of Property?
Yes. Where the assets are modest, the Family Court can make an order to administer property under section 11 instead of appointing a full property manager, and the paperwork and ongoing obligations are much lighter.
The Ministry of Justice sets out the current thresholds for an order to administer property.
A property manager is required instead if any of the property to be managed is worth more than $25,000, or if the annual income or benefit exceeds the set limit, which is $41,200 for orders made between 1 April 2026 and 31 March 2027 and rises in steps to $45,000 from 1 April 2029.
Section 11 itself still shows the original figures of $5,000 and $20,000, because the Act allows those amounts to be updated from time to time by Order in Council rather than by amending the section.
That’s a trap for anyone relying on older online guidance, and several widely read articles still quote the 1997 figures.
An administration order suits situations where the only real asset is a bank account holding superannuation payments.
What Reporting and Accounting Does Each Role Involve?
The financial oversight falls almost entirely on the property manager, and this is one of the sharpest differences between the two roles.
Under section 45, a manager must file a statement of the person’s property within three months of taking office, another statement within 30 days of the end of each year of the managership, and a final statement within 30 days of ceasing to hold office.
Section 46 then requires Public Trust, or a qualified auditor appointed by Public Trust, to examine those statements and report any deficiencies, and Public Trust can demand access to the manager’s records and require explanations. That examination applies to statements filed by a manager who isn’t a trustee corporation, so a Public Trust managership isn’t audited by Public Trust itself.
A welfare guardian has no equivalent routine reporting duty.
Their accountability comes through the consultation obligations in section 18(4), through the review process, and through the right of interested people to apply to the court to review the guardian’s decisions.
On payment, section 50 says all expenses properly incurred by a manager are charged against the person’s property, but the manager isn’t entitled to any remuneration for their services unless the court directs otherwise.
Section 21 gives welfare guardians a matching right to have expenses reasonably incurred charged against the person’s property, but it creates no entitlement to be paid for their time. Family members appointed to either role should expect their costs back and nothing more.
Can a Welfare Guardian or Property Manager Be Held Personally Liable?
Yes. Both roles carry the same liability standard: no action lies against them for anything done or omitted under the Act unless they acted in bad faith or without reasonable care.
That protection sits in section 20 for welfare guardians and section 49 for property managers.
The Supreme Court confirmed the seriousness of the manager’s exposure in Johnston v Schurr [2015] NZSC 82, holding at paragraph 28 that “the combination of the supervisory jurisdiction and s 49(1) means that Mr Schurr is liable if, in the exercise of his powers, he acted in bad faith or without reasonable care and thereby caused the appellant loss.”
The Court treated section 49 as limiting an otherwise broader liability, not as a shield against careless management.
Both sections carry a second trap that catches people out.
A welfare guardian or manager will be personally liable on any contract they enter into if they didn’t disclose, before entering into it, that they were acting in that capacity.
The test is whether you disclosed your capacity before the contract was made, not simply whose name appears on the signature line, so say plainly that you’re signing as manager or welfare guardian and record it in the document.
How Long Do the Orders Last and When Are They Reviewed?
Neither order is permanent, and both must be reviewed by the Family Court within three years.
Section 12(8) requires the court to specify a date not later than three years after a welfare guardian order by which the guardian must apply for a review, and section 31(8) imposes the same three year limit on a property manager.
If the order is then extended at that first review, the next review date can be set further out.
Sections 86(7) and 87(8) allow the court to specify a date of five years, or a lesser period if the court thinks it appropriate, before the following review.
Both of those subsections were changed from three years to five years by section 158 and section 159 of the Courts Matters Act 2018, and some published guidance still shows the older three year figure for extended property orders.
The person subject to the order, the guardian or manager acting for them, and other interested people with the court’s leave can apply for a review at any time, not just at the scheduled date.
Where the situation is urgent, the court can make a temporary order while the full application is decided.
The Ministry of Justice confirms that a temporary welfare guardian order can last up to 6 months, while a temporary property order can last up to 3 months.
That gap is worth planning around if you’re filing both applications together and one side of the arrangement will lapse first.
What Does It Cost to Apply for These Orders?
There’s no Family Court filing fee for either application, and the Ministry of Justice states that it’s free to apply for both a welfare guardian order and an order appointing a property manager.
The real cost is legal work, medical reports and, in contested cases, the lawyer the court appoints to represent the person the application is about.
For comparison, Public Trust’s published price list effective 6 July 2026 charges $2,249 to prepare a property manager application, $981 for a welfare guardian application, and $2,999 where both are prepared together, with $2,114 for the three to five yearly review and re-appointment.
Those figures show the cost advantage of filing both applications at once rather than returning to court twice.
They also show that ongoing compliance has a price, since filing the first and final statements and the annual statements attracts separate fees each time.
What Could Change After the 2026 Law Commission Review?
The Government has accepted in principle that the PPPR Act should be repealed and replaced, but no replacement Bill has been introduced and the current regime still applies in full. On 24 February 2026 the Law Commission published its review of adult decision-making capacity law and recommended that a new Act replace the Protection of Personal and Property Rights Act 1988, making 175 recommendations in total.
The central shift is away from a “best interests” standard and towards decisions grounded in the person’s own wishes and values, in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
The Commission also recommended a new “formal supporter” role to help people make their own decisions rather than have decisions made for them, and said court-appointed arrangements should continue but be significantly reformed.
On 3 August 2026 the Law Commission reported that the Government had accepted in principle the central recommendation that legislative reform is required, and had signalled an intention to begin substantive work on that reform as a priority next Parliamentary term.
None of this changes the law today.
Welfare guardian and property manager orders continue to operate exactly as set out above, and any new Act will take time to be drafted and passed.
The practical point for families is that if replacement legislation is passed, orders made now are likely to be carried over or reviewed under a different framework, which is another reason to keep the intervention as narrow as the situation genuinely requires.
The Commission’s case for reform rests on equality, dignity and supported decision-making, and the demographic picture is what makes those questions increasingly practical ones.
A Ministry of Health briefing dated 8 December 2023 records that New Zealand had approximately 875,000 people aged over 65, around 17 percent of the population, with that number projected to increase by 50 percent over the next 15 years.
A Ministry of Health Cabinet paper estimates that 69,713 people were living with dementia in New Zealand in 2020, rising to a predicted 167,483 by 2050.
Need Help Deciding Which PPPR Application to Make?
Choosing between a welfare guardian and a property manager comes down to whether the decisions your family can’t make are about care or about money, and in many cases the answer is both.
As PPPR lawyers in New Zealand, Evolution Lawyers can help you work out which order fits your situation, prepare the medical evidence the court needs, and file the application properly the first time.
Contact our team today to discuss a welfare guardian or property manager application.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can one person be both welfare guardian and property manager?
Yes. The Family Court can appoint the same person to both roles, and this is common where one family member is already handling everything. Each appointment still needs its own application and its own order. The person then holds two separate sets of powers with different limits, different reporting duties and different review dates under the PPPR Act.
Do you still need a court order if there’s an enduring power of attorney?
Usually not. A valid enduring power of attorney covering the decisions needed will often avoid the need for the equivalent court order, so setting one up while you still have capacity is cheaper and faster. A PPPR application is normally needed where no enduring power of attorney exists, where it doesn’t cover the decisions required, or where it’s disputed.
How long does a welfare guardian or property manager application take?
The Ministry of Justice doesn’t publish a standard processing time, and it depends on the court’s workload and whether anyone opposes it. After filing, the court appoints a lawyer to meet the person concerned and report back before deciding. Where there’s urgency, a temporary order can be made, lasting up to six months for a welfare guardian and three months for a property manager.
Can a welfare guardian sell the person’s house?
No. Selling property is a property manager’s function, not a welfare guardian’s, and a welfare guardian has no authority over assets at all. Even a property manager needs the Family Court’s consent to sell land worth more than $120,000, which covers almost every home in New Zealand. That consent requirement is one of the Act’s main financial safeguards.
What happens if a property manager mismanages the money?
A property manager is liable if they acted in bad faith or without reasonable care and caused loss, which the Supreme Court confirmed in Johnston v Schurr. Public Trust or an appointed auditor examines the manager’s annual statements and reports deficiencies to the court. Interested people can also apply at any time to review the order or the manager’s decisions.
Who can apply for a welfare guardian or property manager order?
The person themselves, a relative, an attorney under an enduring power of attorney, a social worker, a medical practitioner, a representative of a welfare organisation, or a person in charge of an institution where they live can apply. For a property manager, a trustee corporation or an existing welfare guardian can also apply. Anyone else needs the court’s leave.