Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills in Glendale

Start with what has changed

A change in your circumstances can be a reason to look again at the written preferences in your advance health care directive. Rather than assuming an older document still says what you want, compare its instructions with the questions that matter to you now.

As you review it, note any statements that no longer reflect your wishes, any important preferences that are absent, and any language you find unclear. These are useful points to discuss when considering an update; they are not a substitute for legal or medical advice.

• What parts of the document still reflect your current preferences?
• Are there instructions you would now change or clarify?
• Would someone trying to locate the document know where to find it?

Written preferences and a decision-maker are distinct

An advance health care directive can express your health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. Those are related functions, but they are not the same: written instructions communicate preferences, while identifying a person addresses who may make decisions.

This page focuses on reviewing and communicating written treatment preferences, not choosing an agent. If your review raises questions about who should make health-care decisions, treat that as a separate issue to discuss rather than assuming that changing written preferences answers it.

A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial decisions, not health-care wishes. Keeping that distinction in mind can help you identify which document relates to the question you are trying to address.

Make the document findable

Preferences can be useful only if the relevant document can be accessed by the people who may need it. After reviewing your plan, consider where the current document is kept and how the appropriate people would learn its location. You can also make a short list of questions to discuss about sharing or updating it.

Preparing and keeping relevant documents accessible is different from registering information about an executed directive. A registry concerns information about a directive that has already been executed; it does not replace preparing the document or making sure it can be found.

For preparation, gather the directive you currently have and make a note of the parts you want to revisit. You may also want to identify, in your own records, who should know where the document is kept. These organizational steps do not prescribe how a document must be completed or shared.

A practical review conversation

A focused review can begin with three questions: What has changed since you prepared the document? Which written preferences still fit, and which do not? How will the current document be available to the people who may need it? Bring the existing document and your notes so the discussion can address your actual concerns rather than relying on memory.

If your main concern is unclear treatment language, identify the wording and ask what it communicates. If the concern is that people may not find the document, focus on accessibility and how information about it is kept. If the issue is who should make decisions, recognize that this is a separate part of an advance directive from expressing written wishes.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. serves clients virtually throughout California from its Novato office. A next step is to arrange a discussion about the document you have and the changes you are considering.