Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills in Tracy

Separate your instructions from your decision-maker

A directive can address two related but distinct matters: what you want for your health care, and who you want to make health-care decisions. Written preferences give others information about your wishes; naming a person gives someone a role in making decisions. A document can address both, but the two functions are not interchangeable.

Before relying on a document, consider whether it communicates the preferences you intend to share and whether the person named to make decisions is the person you want in that role. If you want to focus on choosing that person, treat that as a separate planning question rather than assuming written treatment preferences answer it.

• Which preferences do you want conveyed in writing?
• Who should make health-care decisions, and do your instructions make that person's role clear?
• Would someone reading the document understand what you want communicated?

Make your preferences clear and usable

Think through the kinds of health-care preferences you want the document to communicate, and use language that reflects your own priorities. This is a planning conversation about what you want others to understand—not medical advice about which treatment to choose. If a preference is difficult to express, identify the question you want to discuss with an appropriate health-care professional before settling on wording.

A practical preparation step is to write down, in your own words, the preferences you want to discuss and any questions about how they might be understood. That can help you distinguish what belongs in written instructions from questions about who should make decisions. A financial power of attorney serves a different, financial role; it should not be treated as a substitute for health-care instructions or a health-care decision-maker.

• List the preferences you want others to know.
• Note any wording or interpretation questions to clarify.
• Keep health-care decisions separate from financial-authority planning.

Plan for access as well as preparation

Preparing a directive and making its information available are separate practical concerns. Consider who may need to know that the document exists and how the relevant information can be found when needed. A document that is hard for the people involved to locate may not communicate your wishes when they are trying to understand them.

California provides an Advance Health Care Directive Registry. Registering information about an executed directive is distinct from preparing the document and keeping relevant documents accessible. Treat registry information as an additional step to consider, not as a replacement for making the document available to the people who may need it.

• Identify who should know where the directive can be found.
• Consider whether registry information is useful in addition to keeping the document accessible.
• Revisit your arrangements if the people involved or your preferences change.

Clarify the arrangement before relying on it

Before treating a directive as a complete plan, check that you have addressed both the preferences you want communicated and the person you want to make health-care decisions. Then consider whether the relevant people can locate the information. These are different questions: clear wording does not by itself make the document accessible, and access does not resolve uncertainty about what you want.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. can discuss advance health care directives and living wills with clients in Tracy through virtual service. A useful next step is to gather any existing directive, note the preferences you want it to communicate, and write down questions about access or the roles described in the document.