Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills in Commerce

First decide what you want written down

Before focusing on a form or on who might act for you, consider what you want another person to understand about your health-care wishes. An advance health care directive can express those wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. This page focuses on the written preferences: the concerns, priorities, or instructions you want the document to convey.

Keep the question of treatment preferences separate from the question of who should make decisions. You may want to think through both, but selecting a decision-maker does not itself explain your wishes. Conversely, written preferences do not answer who you want to make decisions. Treating these as separate planning questions can make your notes clearer.

• Optional preparation: jot down the priorities or concerns you want a decision-maker to understand.
• Make a separate note of questions about choosing a health-care decision-maker, rather than letting that choice stand in for written preferences.

Turn broad values into useful questions

A general statement may not explain what you mean in a particular situation. As you consider what to record, ask yourself what concern or value is behind each preference and what circumstances you have in mind. For example, if you want a decision-maker to understand that comfort matters to you, note what you mean by that in your own words and what you would want them to consider. This is a way to organize your thinking, not a recommendation about treatment.

You can also write down terms or situations you want clarified before recording an instruction. Keep medical questions for an appropriate health-care professional; the purpose of your preparation is to identify what you want communicated, not to decide which care is medically suitable.

• Optional preparation: list the values you want reflected and the questions you still have.
• Separate what you know you want communicated from matters you want to clarify.

Plan how the document can be found

Preparing the directive and keeping the relevant document accessible are different practical parts of making your wishes available to people who may need them. Think through where you will keep it and how someone who needs to refer to it would learn where it is. If it is difficult to locate, your written preferences may not be readily available to those seeking them.

When organizing records, distinguish health-care instructions from financial authority documents. A financial power of attorney serves a different financial role; it is not the document for expressing health-care wishes. Keeping the records clearly identified can reduce confusion about which document contains the information someone is looking for.

• Optional preparation: make a note of where the directive is kept and who knows how to find it.
• Keep health-care records identifiable apart from documents concerning financial decisions.

Keep registration separate from the directive itself

Preparing and keeping an advance health care directive accessible is distinct from registering information about an executed directive. Registration concerns information about the directive; it does not replace deciding what wishes you want the document to express or keeping the relevant document available.

A practical order is to clarify the content you want recorded, identify where the document will be kept, and then consider separately whether registering information about an executed directive is relevant to you. This distinction helps avoid treating a registry entry as a substitute for the document.

Gather a focused set of notes and records

You can prepare for a planning conversation without having every preference resolved. Consider gathering any existing advance health care directive or related planning records, noting where each is kept, and writing down the wishes or concerns you want to communicate. Mark questions that remain open instead of guessing at answers.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. is based in Novato and offers virtual services throughout California. A useful next step is to organize your current records and your notes about treatment preferences, while keeping the choice of a health-care decision-maker as a separate question.