Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Ross Residents

Start with the distinction: instructions and decision-maker

An advance health care directive can express your health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. These are related but distinct purposes: written instructions describe what you want known, while choosing a person concerns who may make decisions. This page focuses on preparing treatment preferences, not on how to select an agent.

A financial power of attorney serves a different role: it concerns financial decisions rather than health-care decisions. If you are gathering existing planning papers, keep financial documents separate so the purpose of each document is clear.

What to collect before a remote consultation

A useful preparation step is to write down what you want a directive to communicate and which questions you want to discuss. You do not need to arrive with polished legal language. A plain-language outline can help keep the conversation focused on your preferences and the information you want others to be able to find.

• Note the treatment preferences or care-related wishes you want to discuss, and any situations or questions that make those preferences important to you.
• List terms or choices in an existing document that you do not understand or want to revisit.
• Gather copies of any existing advance health care directive and related planning documents you want to discuss; keep financial power of attorney documents clearly identified as financial documents.
• Write down where relevant documents are currently kept and who would need to know how to locate them.

Make the document useful when it is needed

Preparing a directive and making information about an executed directive available are separate tasks. The California Courts resource distinguishes preparing and keeping relevant documents accessible from registering information about an executed directive. A registration entry is not a substitute for considering where the document itself will be kept and how people who may need it can find it.

As a practical preparation step, consider who should know where your document is stored and what information you would want them to have. Bring questions about keeping the document accessible to your consultation. The objective is to make your wishes easier to locate, not to assume that a document will be found simply because it exists.

Discuss your preferences with Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. has one in-person office in Novato and provides virtual services throughout California. Ross residents can prepare for a remote consultation by organizing existing documents, writing down the wishes they want to communicate, and listing questions about how to keep the document accessible.

A productive next step is to bring that outline and any existing directive to the consultation. You can then discuss how the written instructions relate to the separate question of who may make health-care decisions, without treating those as interchangeable choices.