Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Lawndale Residents

Start with the purpose of the document

An advance health care directive can do two distinct things: express your health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. If your immediate concern is recording treatment preferences, focus first on what you want the written instructions to say. Choosing a person to make decisions is a separate question, even though the directive can address both.

A financial power of attorney serves a different role: it concerns financial decisions, not health-care wishes. Keeping that distinction clear helps you focus this planning conversation on the choices a health-care directive is meant to cover.

Make preferences concrete before drafting

Begin by identifying the situations or kinds of care you want your instructions to address. Consider what you would want others to know about your priorities, what matters most to you, and what questions you want to discuss with a qualified health-care professional. These prompts can help you organize your thinking; they are not medical recommendations or a substitute for deciding what reflects your own values.

For example, someone who wants loved ones to understand their priorities might write down questions about the kinds of treatment decisions they find most important to discuss. The useful result of that preparation is a clearer account of the person’s preferences—not a prediction of what treatment will be appropriate in a future medical situation.

• Write down the preferences and questions you want to communicate.
• Separate instructions about your own wishes from the decision of whom, if anyone, you want to identify as a health-care decision-maker.
• Note where the completed document will be kept and who should know how to find it.

Plan for access, not just completion

A document can communicate your wishes only if the people who may need it can locate the relevant information. Think through who should know where it is kept and how they could access it when needed. Keeping the directive accessible is a practical part of planning, separate from preparing the document itself.

California also provides a registry for information about an executed advance health care directive. Registering information and preparing and keeping the relevant documents accessible are distinct steps. Consider them separately: an entry in a registry is not the same task as deciding what your instructions say or ensuring the document can be found.

What this planning can—and cannot—settle

A written directive is a way to express health-care wishes and may identify someone to make health-care decisions. It does not answer every future medical question in advance: the preferences you record are yours to consider and communicate, while medical circumstances and treatment decisions may require discussion with health-care professionals.

It is also important not to treat a health-care directive as a financial planning document. Questions about managing money have a different function and should not be confused with instructions about health care. Keeping those purposes distinct makes it easier to identify what you want this document to accomplish.

A focused next step

Before discussing a directive, gather any existing health-care instructions you want considered, a short list of preferences and questions, and a note about where you plan to keep the document. You can also decide whether you want to discuss identifying a health-care decision-maker, while keeping that choice separate from the content of your treatment preferences.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. offers virtual services throughout California from its Novato office. A focused planning conversation can help you clarify the purpose of the document, organize the information you want it to convey, and consider how it will remain accessible.