Advance Health Care Directives in El Sobrante, Contra Costa County

Separate your treatment instructions from other planning decisions

An advance health care directive can serve two related purposes: expressing your health-care wishes and identifying someone to make health-care decisions. This page focuses on the written wishes. Choosing who should act as your health-care decision-maker is a distinct question to consider separately.

A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial matters, rather than health-care decisions. If you are gathering planning documents, keep that distinction clear so a discussion about treatment preferences does not become confused with financial authority.

Collect the preferences you want to discuss

Before a remote consultation, make a private working list of the health-care preferences you want to put into words. Note the situations or decisions you have in mind, what matters most to you, and any questions about how to describe those wishes. This is preparation for a conversation, not a medical recommendation or a legal requirement.

You may also note any uncertainty or differences between what you have previously said and what you would want documented now. Rather than trying to resolve every question in advance, identify the points you want to discuss and explain what is unclear.

• Write down the preferences you want the document to communicate.
• List questions about how your wishes could be expressed in writing.
• Keep the question of who should make decisions distinct from the treatment preferences themselves.

Plan for access as well as preparation

Preparing a directive and making its information accessible are separate practical concerns. Think about who may need to know where your document is kept and how that person could locate it. You can discuss a way to organize and share that information as part of your planning.

California’s Advance Health Care Directive Registry is a separate resource for registering information about an executed directive. Registration information is not the same as preparing the directive itself or keeping the document accessible to the people who may need it. Discuss whether the registry is relevant to your plans; do not treat it as a substitute for considering access to the document.

Prepare for a virtual consultation from El Sobrante

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. has one physical office in Novato and offers virtual services throughout California. El Sobrante is an unincorporated community in Contra Costa County; that service coverage does not mean the firm has a local office there.

For a remote conversation, have your working list of preferences and questions available. If you already have relevant planning documents, you may gather them to discuss how they relate to your current wishes. You do not need to decide every issue before asking for help. A useful next step is to contact the firm to discuss your goals and what you would like to address.