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An advance healthcare directive is a document you establish exclusively for your medical decisions or the disposition of your remains upon your incapacity. This document can be used while you have capacity, if you grant someone the ability, or only upon your incapacity.
The advance directive’s purpose is to allow someone to make your medical decisions for you if you otherwise can’t do so. An advance healthcare directive is similar to a power of attorney, except the directive is exclusively for medical decisions, as opposed to the financial or legal decisions in a standard power of attorney.
Many hospitals will give you a basic Advance Health Care Directive form to fill out, which they keep on file. The hospital usually wants you to fill it out before an upcoming, risky operation or medical procedure.
Advance healthcare directives are always useful to have in place. Suppose you don’t have one and you lose the requisite capacity to make your own medical decisions due to a coma, dementia, Alzheimer’s or other condition. In that case, the alternative is usually having to file for a conservatorship.
A conservatorship is a complex, expensive and time-consuming process. It requires ongoing court supervision throughout the duration. The court does not favor conservatorships if a power of attorney or medical directive is in place ahead of time. Those are less restrictive alternatives to conservatorship, which is favored by just about everybody involved, the court included.
Setting up a healthcare directive is always the best option because life is unpredictable. It’s wisest to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Suppose you can no longer make your own medical decisions. In that case, a directive allows your family or whoever you have nominated as your agent under the directive to step in and make the decisions you directed ahead of time. This decision prevents your family from getting stuck in court and all the issues that come along with that process.
Attorney Taylor Preston is an experienced lawyer based in Irvine, CA, who has helped clients like you navigate the intricacies of estate planning law. With years of estate planning experience, he is prepared to assist you with drawing up an advance healthcare directive to protect you when you can no longer make medical decisions about your treatment.
Still have questions? Ready to get started? Contact Preston Law Group, P.C. today to schedule a free initial consultation.
The decisions can be very narrow or very broad. Those decisions might involve:
The directive can also include a nomination for a conservatorship if that were ever to become necessary. You can list several co-agents or multiple agents to serve in order of succession if someone is not available.
All of these decisions are difficult. For example, if you’re on life support and then develop cancer, a decision could be made not to treat the cancer. I always advise clients to make these decisions ahead of time to ensure their wishes are followed.
The decisions can be broad, but we can get as specific as we need to get to fit your circumstances or desires.
You can’t have any decisions or directives that would promote an illegal action or promote illegality. For example, there are ongoing debates about physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Because these practices are unlawful, you can’t authorize somebody to end your life on your behalf.
As long as the directive is legal, you simply need to have mental capacity in order to sign or have the document witnessed and notarized at the time of its execution.
Attorney Taylor Preston is an experienced lawyer based in Irvine, CA, who has helped clients like you navigate the intricacies of estate planning law. With years of estate planning experience, he is prepared to assist you with drawing up an advance healthcare directive to protect you when you can no longer make medical decisions about your treatment.
Still have questions? Ready to get started? Contact Preston Law Group, P.C. today to schedule a free initial consultation.
The key elements to consider when drafting an advance healthcare directive are:
Those are all factors that should be considered anytime you’re creating one of these directives.
Estate planning attorneys have experience with drafting, execution, and follow-through with advance healthcare directives. There are a number of complications, conflicts, or other issues that can arise. The main issue is when you become legally incapacitated or meet the requirements of incapacity, whether it’s time for that designated agent to step in and make decisions for you.
There are many legal terms or a lot of information that should be included in directives that you may not know to include if you’re drafting a directive yourself. That’s particularly important with a document like this, where you’re essentially giving somebody else the power to determine whether or not to continue life-sustaining treatment.
For you, this is a serious decision and an essential document. With any legal document, I would always recommend that you take the extra step, even if it’s a little bit more expensive or time-consuming, to consult with an attorney.
It’s always better to be safe than sorry. If you prepare the directive yourself, you might forget to include something, or there may be a term that’s ambiguous that can create litigation.
Having an attorney prepare your healthcare directive for you with proper legal advice and guidance is always the first and best option.
I have clients, especially couples, who set up estate plans together. One client may want to be buried; the other may want to be cremated. One client may want to donate organs on their passing if they’re viable. The other client may not want to donate organs. One client may want to have someone as their agent who has a background in medicine or the medical field, and the other person does not.
These are the types of conflicting decisions that arise fairly often. These are personal decisions. People don’t always agree on what the best course of action should be. However, if somebody is unsure about one of these key decisions, we never want to force them to choose the spot.
We want to ensure that if it’s information we can’t give them, they get that information or advice somewhere else before making a decision of this magnitude. I always recommend that someone get a second opinion. Maybe consult a medical professional. Maybe consult their family to make sure everyone is on the same page.
The client needs to make that decision only after:
Maybe we can guide them through that thought process, and they can come to a decision on their own. We’ve done that many times before. Only when a client has the information and the confidence to make a final decision would we recommend proceeding with executing or finalizing a document of that importance.
Still Have Questions? Ready To Get Started?
For more information on drafting an advance healthcare directive in Irvine, CA, an initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (949) 993-0639 today.
Attorney Taylor Preston is an experienced lawyer based in Irvine, CA, who has helped clients like you navigate the intricacies of estate planning law. With years of estate planning experience, he is prepared to assist you with drawing up an advance healthcare directive to protect you when you can no longer make medical decisions about your treatment.
Still have questions? Ready to get started? Contact Preston Law Group, P.C. today to schedule a free initial consultation.
