Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Maywood Residents

Separate treatment instructions from choosing an agent

An advance health care directive can serve two related but distinct purposes: expressing your health-care wishes and identifying someone to make health-care decisions. You can prepare for a discussion about the instructions themselves by thinking about what matters to you if you cannot communicate or make a decision.

Choosing an agent is a separate decision from describing treatment preferences. Consider each topic on its own: what you want the document to say about your wishes, and whether you want to identify someone to make health-care decisions. This page focuses on treatment instructions; questions about selecting an agent can be handled separately.

A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial decisions, not health-care decisions. If you already have financial-planning documents, keep them separate from health-care instructions when gathering materials for the consultation.

• Write down the treatment preferences you want to discuss.
• Note any questions about how to express those preferences in a directive.
• Keep health-care documents distinct from financial powers of attorney.

Prepare for a remote consultation

For a focused conversation, collect any health-care directive or other relevant document you already have, along with notes about what you want your written instructions to communicate. If you have not prepared a document, a short list of preferences and questions is still a useful starting point.

Think through the circumstances or choices you want to discuss without trying to turn those notes into medical instructions. The purpose is to clarify what you want the document to communicate, not to decide treatment for a particular medical situation during a legal-planning conversation.

Also consider where relevant documents are kept and how someone who may need them could find them. Preparing and keeping documents accessible is different from registering information about an executed directive. You can raise questions about that distinction during the consultation.

• Gather any existing health-care directive or related documents.
• Make a list of preferences and questions you want to cover.
• Note where relevant documents are kept and who may need to know how to find them.

Make the document useful beyond the conversation

Written instructions are more useful when the people who may need them can locate them. As part of planning, consider where you will keep the document and how you will make its location known to the people involved. Keep the document itself accessible rather than relying only on someone knowing that it exists.

If you already have an executed directive, distinguish keeping the document available from registering information about it. Registration information is not a substitute for preparing and keeping the relevant document accessible. If you are unsure what you already have or where it is kept, note that as a question for the consultation.

Discuss your plan with a Maywood-focused next step

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. has one in-person office in Novato and provides virtual services throughout California, including for Maywood residents. A practical next step is to gather your existing documents, write down the treatment preferences you want to address, and identify questions about making those instructions available to the people who may need them.

Use the conversation to distinguish the written expression of your wishes from the separate choice of a health-care decision-maker. Bring any uncertainty about documents you already have or how they are stored so the discussion can address your planning priorities.