Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills in Rolling Hills Estates

Identify what you want to change

Before revising or preparing a document, consider the concern that prompted your review. Are you trying to put health-care wishes into words, reconsider who should make health-care decisions, or make sure the relevant information can be found by people who may need it? These are related, but they are not the same question.

An advance health care directive can express health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. If your immediate focus is treatment preferences, begin with the instructions you want the document to communicate. Then consider separately whether you also want to revisit the person identified to make decisions. This page focuses on documenting preferences, not on choosing an agent.

• Write down the health-care wishes or questions you want to discuss.
• Mark whether your concern is about the instructions, the decision-maker, or access to the document.
• If a concern is financial rather than health-related, keep it separate for comparison.

Compare documents by the decisions they address

An advance health care directive is the document to consider when the goal is to express health-care wishes. It can also identify a person to make health-care decisions. Those functions may appear together, but reviewing one does not require you to treat the instructions and the choice of decision-maker as the same issue.

A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial decisions. It is not a substitute for documenting health-care wishes, and a health-care directive should not be treated as addressing financial authority. If you are considering changes to both, compare each document with the kind of decision you want it to address.

For example, if a concern involves both communicating preferences about care and managing finances, separate those concerns on your review list. The comparison is about purpose; it does not by itself answer what wording or changes are appropriate for your circumstances.

• Health-care wishes and health-care decision-making: review the advance health care directive.
• Financial decision-making: consider the separate role of a financial power of attorney.
• For a concern that crosses both areas, identify each part separately.

Consider access as well as content

A document’s contents are only one part of your planning. Preparing the relevant documents and keeping them accessible to people who may need them are distinct practical considerations. When reviewing a possible change, ask yourself who may need to locate the document and how you want that information to be available to them.

Registration of information about an executed directive is a separate consideration from preparing and keeping documents accessible. Do not assume that addressing one of these tasks automatically addresses the other. If you are considering registration, verify current details through an appropriate official resource rather than relying on assumptions about how it works.

• Optionally gather existing health-care planning documents for comparison.
• Optionally make a short list of preferences and questions you want to raise.
• Consider document content and document access as separate topics.

Bring a focused question to the discussion

A useful starting point is to identify the document you currently have, the change you are considering, and the reason for it. You might ask whether the issue concerns communicating health-care wishes, identifying a decision-maker, or ensuring people who may need the document can access it. If you are also reviewing financial planning, note that separately so the different document purposes remain clear.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. provides virtual services throughout California from its Novato office. For a first conversation, you can describe your planning concern and the documents you want to compare. That helps keep the discussion centered on what you want communicated and which question you are trying to resolve.