Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills in Richmond

Start with the decision you want the document to address

A useful first question is whether you want to communicate your own health-care wishes, appoint someone to make health-care decisions, or address both. An advance health care directive can do both: it can express health-care wishes and identify a person to make decisions. That means a review need not begin by assuming that instructions and choosing a decision-maker require separate documents.

This page focuses on the written-instructions side of that choice. If your main concern is who should speak for you, consider that question separately from what treatments or care preferences you want conveyed. Keeping the two questions distinct can make it easier to decide what information you want a document to communicate.

• Which health-care wishes do you want to put in writing?
• Do you also want to identify someone to make health-care decisions?
• Are you reviewing an existing directive, or deciding what information to prepare?

Compare health-care instructions with financial authority

A financial power of attorney serves a different role from an advance health care directive. The directive concerns health-care wishes and health-care decisions; the financial power of attorney is for financial matters. When reviewing your documents, identify which decisions each is meant to address rather than treating one as a substitute for the other.

For example, if your concern is who can handle financial matters, an advance health care directive does not answer that question. If your concern is communicating health-care wishes, a financial power of attorney does not serve that health-care purpose. These are separate planning questions, even if you are reviewing both documents at the same time.

• Write down whether each concern is about health care or finances.
• Mark any document whose purpose is unclear so you can ask about it before making changes.

Decide whether the instructions or the access plan needs attention

Preparing a directive and keeping relevant documents accessible are distinct from registering information about an executed directive. A review can therefore include two separate questions: do the written wishes still reflect what you want to communicate, and can the people who may need the information access it?

Registration is not the same task as preparing or keeping documents accessible. Consider what information should be available to the people who may need it, and whether your concern is about the content of the directive or access to information about an already executed one. This distinction helps avoid treating registration as a replacement for reviewing the instructions themselves.

• Separate document content from how relevant information will be available.
• Note whether you are considering a directive that has already been executed or preparing information for future use.

Prepare for a focused document review

Before discussing possible changes, gather the health-care documents you currently have and note the questions that prompted your review. You might list preferences you want the written instructions to communicate, identify any uncertainty about the person named to make decisions, and flag any financial power of attorney you are comparing. These are preparation prompts, not legal requirements.

A focused discussion can then begin with the practical choice: whether you want to revisit written health-care wishes, the choice of decision-maker, document access, or more than one of those issues. Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. serves clients virtually throughout California from its in-person office in Novato. Bring your questions about which document serves which purpose so the next step can address the issue that matters to you.