Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Agoura Hills Residents

Begin with the decision your document needs to address

Consider what you want others to know about your health care if you cannot communicate your preferences. An advance health care directive can express those wishes in writing. It can also identify someone to make health-care decisions, but the written instructions and the choice of decision-maker answer different questions.

This distinction is useful when deciding what to discuss first. If your main concern is documenting treatment preferences, focus on the instructions you want the document to convey. If your concern is who may speak or decide, consider the agent provision separately. You may want to address both, but selecting an agent does not itself explain your treatment preferences.

• What health-care wishes do you want available to others?
• Do you also want to identify someone to make health-care decisions?
• Are you asking about health-care authority, or about authority over finances?

Separate health-care authority from financial authority

The key authority question is what kind of decision is involved. An advance health care directive concerns health-care wishes and may identify a person to make health-care decisions. A financial power of attorney serves a different role: it concerns financial matters, not health-care treatment choices.

That difference can change the next planning step. If the task is to communicate treatment preferences, a financial power of attorney is not a substitute for documenting health-care wishes. If the concern is managing financial matters, health-care instructions do not provide that financial authority. When both concerns matter, discuss them as separate planning needs rather than assuming one document addresses both.

Make your written wishes useful to the people who may need them

A document can only help communicate your preferences when the people who need it can find and consult it. Think about where you will keep the directive and which relevant people should know how to access it. You can also prepare a short list of the questions or situations you want to discuss when clarifying your written wishes.

For example, you might note the preferences you want the document to address and identify where the document is kept. This is a practical way to organize a planning conversation; it is not a legal requirement. The purpose is to make your expressed wishes and the document itself easier to locate when they may be needed.

• Write down the health-care preferences you want to discuss.
• Decide where the directive will be kept and who should know how to find it.
• Keep health-care instructions distinct from documents addressing financial authority.

Keeping a directive accessible is different from registering it

Preparing a directive and keeping it accessible are practical steps distinct from registering information about an executed directive. Registration is not the same thing as creating the document or deciding what its instructions should say. Consider first whether the document reflects the wishes you want to communicate and whether relevant people can locate it; then consider whether registering information about an executed directive is useful to you.

These choices address availability, not the substance of your treatment preferences or the separate question of who may make health-care decisions. If you are unsure which question is most important, start by identifying the decision you want the document to support.

Plan around the question that matters to you

A focused planning discussion can begin with three points: the wishes you want recorded, whether you want to identify someone to make health-care decisions, and how the people who may need the document will find it. If financial decision-making is also a concern, raise it separately because it involves a different kind of authority.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. can discuss advance health care directives and living wills with people in Agoura Hills through virtual services. A useful next step is to gather the questions you want answered and the preferences you want to communicate, then contact the firm to discuss your planning needs.