General Power of Attorney in the UAE

What "general" is actually taken to mean

One UAE authority publishes a definition, which is more useful than any description we could write. The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department's notarisation guidance manual lists a General Power of Attorney - service code ADJD-0001 - as authorising the attorney to act on the principal's behalf "in every permissible and known matter".

Two words in that phrase are doing the work. "Permissible" means the document cannot authorise what the law does not allow anyway. "Known" means it covers the ordinary and the expected, not the exceptional. A general power of attorney is wide, but it is not a blank cheque, and it is not a substitute for a document that an authority has asked to see specific wording in.

Source: Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, Guidance Manual - Notarisation & Attestation Services, July 2023

What people normally put in one

The everyday business of being present in a country you are not currently in. In practice that is:

• Dealing with government departments and submitting applications on your behalf.
• Utilities and telecoms - opening, transferring and closing accounts.
• Collecting documents, certificates and official correspondence addressed to you.
• Signing routine contracts and renewals that do not dispose of an asset.
• Dealing with a landlord, a building management or an owners association.
• Representing you in ordinary administrative matters where no authority has published a required wording.

What should not be swept in with it

The risk with a general power of attorney is not that it does too little. It is that it is written broadly once and then quietly reaches things you never pictured. Decide each of these deliberately rather than accepting them as part of "general":

• Selling, gifting or mortgaging property. These end or encumber an asset, and they belong in a document written for the property and the transaction.
• Selling or disposing of a vehicle - and note that in Dubai a general document may not be enough anyway. RTA states the representative "must have a power of attorney stipulating the ‘sale and disposal of vehicles’".
• Operating or closing bank accounts, and borrowing in your name.
• Acting in court proceedings. The federal portal states a representative "must prove his appointment through an official power of attorney attested by a notary public", and that only licensed UAE national lawyers may appear before the courts.
• Company matters - signing for the business, changing a licence, binding it to contracts.
• The power to appoint a substitute attorney, which transfers your choice of person to someone else.

When an authority will want a specific one instead

This is the single most useful thing to understand before choosing, because it is where a general power of attorney fails in practice. Breadth is not acceptance. Where an authority has published the wording it expects, a broad document that does not contain that wording can be refused - not because anything is wrong with it, but because the counter is following its own published rule.

The clearest published illustration is the Abu Dhabi manual again: alongside the one General POA it lists eleven subject-bound ones - real estate, commercial licences, shares, vehicles, horses, businesses, litigation, inheritance, personal status, marriage and divorce. An authority that has built a separate service for your subject is telling you which document it expects to receive.

Our guide comparing general and special powers of attorney sets this out in full, with the published examples.

Who is involved, and how long it lasts

The parties are you (the principal), the person you name (the attorney or agent), the notary who witnesses your signature, and whichever bodies your representative ends up dealing with. Unlike a property or vehicle document, a general power of attorney has no single receiving authority - which is exactly why no single authority publishes what it must contain.

On duration, there is no national answer and we will not invent one. Abu Dhabi publishes a cap - "the maximum period for the POA validity is 3 calendar years after the date of notarisation" - and charges "AED 100 for each year of the POA validity", figures from its July 2023 manual. We have found no equivalent published figure for Dubai. Where you need a fixed end date, the sound approach is to write one into the document rather than to rely on a rule that may not exist in your emirate.

Source: Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, Guidance Manual - Notarisation & Attestation Services, July 2023

Language, and signing from abroad

UAE authorities work in Arabic, so the document is prepared in Arabic and English rather than English alone, at no extra charge. Abu Dhabi states the condition explicitly for documents brought to it: one issued in a language other than Arabic "should be translated by a certified translator whose valid license card will be attached to it".

A document signed outside the UAE also has to travel. The Abu Dhabi manual states that "any document issued outside the country must be attested by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs"; what the country you sign in requires before that depends on where you are. Our guide on using a UAE power of attorney from abroad sets out what official sources state and marks clearly what they do not.