Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Azusa Residents

Compare instructions with decision-making authority

An advance health care directive can express your health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. Those functions are connected, but they are not identical. Written preferences communicate what you want; naming a decision-maker identifies who may act on health-care decisions.

Before revising anything, ask which part no longer reflects your intentions. If your preferences have changed, focus on whether the directive communicates them. If the person you identified is no longer the person you want making decisions, focus on that designation. If both have changed, review both parts together rather than assuming that changing one automatically addresses the other.

• Do the written wishes still reflect what you want communicated about your care?
• Is the person identified to make health-care decisions still the person you want in that role?
• Are you trying to change instructions, the decision-making designation, or both?

Keep financial authority separate

A financial power of attorney serves a different role from an advance health care directive: it concerns financial matters, not health-care decision-making. A financial document should not be treated as a substitute for written health-care preferences or for identifying someone to make health-care decisions.

When comparing documents, first identify the kind of decision each one addresses. If your concern is how someone may handle financial matters, review the financial power of attorney for that purpose. If your concern is care preferences or health-care decisions, focus on the advance health care directive. Keeping those questions separate can clarify what needs attention without expanding a health-care review into a financial-planning decision.

Make the documents findable

Preparing documents and keeping them accessible is a separate task from registering information about an executed advance health care directive. A document that records your preferences may be difficult to use if the people who may need it do not know where to find it.

As a practical preparation step, make a list of where relevant documents are kept and consider who should know how to locate them. You can also note whether your review concerns the document itself, access to it, or information about a directive already in place. This helps distinguish a change to your wishes from an information-access question.

• Gather the health-care directive and any financial power of attorney you want to compare.
• Write down what you want to review: health-care preferences, the person identified to make health-care decisions, or document access.
• Note who may need to know where the relevant documents can be found.

Choose the question to address first

A useful starting point is to describe the decision you are trying to make, not simply to ask whether to replace a document. For example, if your written preferences remain current but your chosen decision-maker has changed, that points to a different review question than a change in preferences with no change in the person identified. These are examples, not statements about any particular person’s circumstances.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. has one in-person office at 802 Grant Ave, Novato, and provides virtual services statewide, including for people in Azusa. A practical next step is to gather the documents you want to compare and identify which part of your plan you want to revisit. The discussion can then focus on the distinction between expressing wishes, assigning health-care decision-making authority, and making documents accessible.