Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Livermore Residents

Start with what has changed

A useful review begins with the reason the current plan no longer feels right. Your circumstances, priorities, or understanding of the care you want may have changed. Rather than assuming the existing document still communicates your wishes, read it with those changes in mind and identify the instructions that need attention.

This review is about expressing your preferences, not deciding what treatment is medically appropriate. Consider which wishes you want the document to communicate, and raise questions about treatment choices with an appropriate health-care professional.

• Note which parts of your present circumstances have changed since you prepared the document.
• Mark any statement that no longer represents your wishes, as well as any topic you want to clarify.
• Make a separate list of questions you want to discuss before settling on the wording of your preferences.

Keep treatment instructions distinct from choosing a decision-maker

An advance health care directive can express health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. Those are related but distinct functions: written instructions communicate your preferences, while naming a person addresses who may make decisions. A change in your treatment preferences does not, by itself, answer whether the person identified in the document remains the person you want involved.

For this review, concentrate on the instructions you want to express. If you also have concerns about the person named to make decisions, treat that as a separate issue to discuss rather than assuming that changing one part resolves the other. A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial decisions, not health-care decisions.

Make the plan usable by the people who may need it

Preparing a directive and keeping relevant documents accessible are practical parts of a plan. A document that expresses your wishes is more useful when the people who may need to refer to it can find it. Think through who should know where your current directive is kept and how that person could locate it when needed.

As you review your records, identify which document is the current one and avoid leaving uncertainty about whether an older version still reflects your wishes. You can make a simple list of the document’s location and the people who should know how to access it. This is a preparation step, not a substitute for deciding what your instructions should say.

• Gather the directive you currently rely on and note where it is kept.
• Identify the people who may need to locate it and consider how to make its location known.
• Keep the directive separate from financial-planning documents so its health-care purpose is clear.

Understand the difference between keeping and registering a directive

Keeping the relevant documents accessible is different from registering information about an executed advance health care directive. Registration is not a replacement for preparing the document or ensuring that the people who may need it can locate it. If you are considering registration, first identify whether your question concerns the document itself, access to it, or registration information.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. has one in-person office in Novato and provides virtual services throughout California, including for people in Livermore. A practical next step is to gather the current directive, write down what no longer matches your circumstances, and identify any separate question about the person named to make health-care decisions.