Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills in Half Moon Bay

Separate your instructions from the agent’s role

A directive can address two questions: what health care you want, and who should make health-care decisions. Written instructions help convey your preferences; naming someone identifies a person to make decisions in the health-care role described by the directive. One does not replace the other. Naming a person does not, by itself, tell them what treatment preferences matter to you, and written preferences do not identify a decision-maker unless you also address that choice.

Consider what you want each part of the document to accomplish. If your main concern is communicating treatment preferences, focus on making those instructions clear and accessible. If you are also naming someone, consider whether that person understands the responsibility you intend them to have. The useful question is not only whom to name, but what information that person would need to understand your wishes.

• Written instructions: communicate your health-care wishes.
• Named decision-maker: identifies someone to make health-care decisions.
• Financial decisions: a separate role, addressed by a financial power of attorney rather than a health-care directive.

Make your preferences useful to the people who may need them

A document can only help communicate your wishes if the relevant people can find and consult it. As a practical preparation step, think about who may need to know where your directive is kept and how they could access it. You can also consider whether the language reflects your current priorities and whether someone you have named understands what you want them to know.

Keeping the document accessible and recording information about an executed directive are different steps. California provides a registry for advance health care directives; registry information is not the same thing as preparing the directive itself. Consider how a record of the directive’s location could help the people you expect to rely on it, without treating registration as a substitute for the document.

Know what a health-care directive does not cover

A health-care directive is not a general grant of authority over every personal or financial matter. A financial power of attorney serves a different role: financial decisions. If you want someone to handle financial matters as well as health-care decisions, treat those as separate planning questions rather than assuming one document covers both.

The practical consequence is that a person named in a health-care directive should not be assumed to have financial authority just because they are named there. Likewise, a financial power of attorney addresses a different role and does not, on that basis alone, communicate health-care preferences. Consider what authority you want to address in each document and what your named decision-maker should understand.

Prepare for a focused planning conversation

Before discussing a directive, you can make a short list of the treatment preferences you want to communicate, questions about how those instructions should be expressed, and the people you are considering for a health-care decision-making role. Note whether your concern is mainly documenting wishes, choosing a decision-maker, making the document easier to locate, or coordinating health-care and financial planning.

These notes are a starting point for discussion, not a substitute for the document. Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. serves Half Moon Bay through virtual services from its Novato-based practice. A focused conversation can help you identify which planning questions concern the directive and which concern a separate financial document.