Advance Health Care Directives in Los Osos, San Luis Obispo County

Separate your treatment preferences from your choice of agent

A useful starting point is to ask two different questions: What health-care wishes do you want documented, and who do you want to identify to make health-care decisions? An advance health care directive can address both. You can focus on explaining your preferences without treating the choice of decision-maker as the same decision.

This page focuses on documenting treatment preferences and making the relevant information accessible. If your main concern is choosing a person to act as your health-care agent, that is a separate planning question. A financial power of attorney also has a different purpose: it concerns financial decisions, not health-care decisions.

• Consider which health-care wishes you want the document to communicate.
• Separately consider whether you want to identify someone to make health-care decisions.
• Do not confuse health-care decision-making with financial authority.

Prepare by identifying what you want the document to communicate

Before discussing a directive, write down the health-care preferences you want to explain and any questions you have about how those preferences should be expressed. You might also note what you want a person making decisions to understand about your wishes. These are preparation prompts, not legal or medical requirements.

Keep the aim practical: create a record of your wishes that can be found when it may be needed. The California Courts distinguish preparing and keeping relevant documents accessible from registering information about an executed directive. Registration is not a substitute for preparing the document or ensuring the relevant people can access it.

• List the preferences or concerns you want to discuss.
• Think about who should know where the relevant document is kept.
• Ask how to make the document accessible to the people who may need it.

Understand what a directive does—and what it does not cover

An advance health care directive can express health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. It is not the same as a financial power of attorney, which serves a financial role. Keeping those purposes distinct helps avoid relying on one kind of document to address a different kind of decision.

A directive records preferences; it is not medical advice. Questions about treatment options or the medical meaning of a preference belong in a conversation with an appropriate health-care professional. Legal planning can help you consider how to communicate your wishes, but it cannot resolve every future medical circumstance or guarantee how a situation will unfold.

Keeping the information available is part of the plan

Creating a document and making its information available are separate practical tasks. Consider who may need to know that it exists and how they can locate it. California also offers a registry for information about an executed advance health care directive; the registry is distinct from preparing and keeping the relevant documents accessible.

Los Osos is an unincorporated community in San Luis Obispo County, not a separate city or a Codi M. Dada Law Office branch. The San Luis Obispo County Superior Court offers general wills, estate, and probate information. That court resource is not proof that a particular court has authority over an individual matter, nor is it an approval process for routine health-care planning documents.

Discuss your planning questions virtually

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. has one physical office at 802 Grant Ave, Novato, California, and provides virtual services throughout California, including Los Osos. A useful next step is to gather your questions about the preferences you want to document, the people who should be able to find the information, and whether you also need to address a separate health-care agent or financial-planning issue.