Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills in Lancaster

Start with the decision you want the document to support

Consider whether your priority is recording your own health-care wishes, naming someone to make health-care decisions, or addressing both. An advance health care directive can do both: it can express health-care wishes and identify a person to make decisions. That makes it useful to distinguish the document’s written instructions from the separate question of who you want involved in decisions.

This page focuses on documenting treatment preferences and making the relevant information available. If you are already comfortable with your choice of decision-maker, you can concentrate on whether your written wishes communicate what matters to you. If you are unsure about that choice, treat it as a separate issue to discuss rather than assuming that written preferences answer it.

Compare the documents by what they address

An advance health care directive concerns health-care wishes and health-care decisions. A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial matters, not the health-care role of an advance directive. Comparing documents by purpose can help you identify whether a proposed change belongs in a health-care document, a financial document, or both.

For example, if your question is how to communicate treatment preferences, review the health-care directive. If your question is who may handle financial matters, the financial power of attorney is the document to consider. These examples illustrate different document purposes; they are not recommendations about what any particular person should choose.

Review what you want your preferences to communicate

Before deciding whether a document needs attention, write down the preferences or questions you want to address in plain language. Consider what you would want a person reading the document to understand, and note any wording that feels unclear or incomplete. This is a preparation step, not a substitute for health-care advice or a decision about particular treatments.

Then compare those concerns with the purpose of the document. Ask whether the issue is about expressing your wishes, identifying someone to make health-care decisions, or handling finances. Keeping those questions separate can make a review more focused and help you avoid changing one document when your concern belongs to another.

• Make a short list of the preferences or questions you want to discuss.
• Identify the documents you currently have and what each appears intended to address.
• Mark any part you want clarified rather than guessing at its effect.

Make relevant information accessible

Preparing and keeping relevant documents accessible is distinct from registering information about an executed advance health care directive. Registration and access are not the same step: registering information does not replace the need to consider how the relevant document can be found by people who may need it.

As a practical preparation step, consider where you keep the documents and how the people you expect to rely on them could learn where to look. You can also note whether your concern is about locating a document, understanding what it addresses, or deciding whether its contents still express your wishes. Those are different questions and may call for different follow-up.

Choose a focused next step

Before seeking help, gather the documents you want to compare and write down the specific issue you want resolved: whether your health-care wishes are clearly expressed, whether you want to revisit who makes health-care decisions, whether you have a separate financial-document question, or whether the concern is simply access to the information. This gives the discussion a defined starting point without assuming that every document needs to change.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. serves clients virtually throughout California from its in-person office in Novato. A focused review can begin with your questions and the documents you want to understand; the appropriate next step depends on which document and concern you are addressing.