Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills in Costa Mesa

Start with the message you want your instructions to convey

Before focusing on document language, consider what you want someone reading your instructions to understand about your preferences. An advance health care directive can express health-care wishes; it can also identify someone to make health-care decisions. These are related but distinct functions. This page focuses on written wishes, rather than choosing or evaluating a health-care agent.

A practical first question is: what should your written instructions help others understand about the care you want? Consider whether there are particular circumstances or priorities you want to discuss and express. The purpose is to make your preferences clearer, not to predict every possible medical situation or replace discussion with the people who may need to know them.

• Which preferences feel important for others to understand?
• Are there circumstances or priorities you want to address in writing?
• What would help someone distinguish a firm preference from a question you still need to consider?

Use your records to make preferences more concrete

Gather information that helps you think through what you want to communicate. This might include notes about your priorities, questions you want to discuss, or records that help you recall previous conversations about your wishes. Treat these as preparation aids, not as documents that the law requires you to have.

Review the information for clarity: does it help you describe a preference, or does it leave an important question unresolved? If a preference depends on a situation you have not considered, note that as a topic to discuss rather than guessing at an answer. The aim is a clearer expression of your wishes, not a medical recommendation or a prediction about how a particular situation will unfold.

Keep in mind that an advance health care directive can carry both written wishes and a way to identify someone to make health-care decisions. If you are working through both functions, treat the written instructions as their own decision: what do you want the document to communicate, apart from who might speak for you?

Make the information findable by the people who may need it

Preparing a directive and keeping relevant documents accessible are separate from registering information about an executed directive. A registration record is not the same thing as having the underlying document available to the people who may need to refer to it.

As a practical preparation step, consider who may need to know where the relevant documents are kept and how you would make that information accessible. You can also identify any uncertainty about where or how to share the documents for discussion. The useful test is whether someone who needs to find the information would know where to look.

Keep health-care instructions distinct from financial planning

An advance health care directive concerns health-care wishes and may identify someone to make health-care decisions. A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial matters. One document should not be treated as a substitute for the other simply because both involve planning for a time when you may need assistance.

When reviewing your planning, ask whether you are addressing health-care preferences, financial authority, or both. Separating those questions helps keep the purpose of each document clear and makes it easier to identify what you still need to decide.

A useful next step

Bring your questions and any notes or records that help explain your preferences to a planning conversation. You can begin with the decision at the center of this page: what do you want your written health-care wishes to communicate? Then identify what information would make that decision clearer and how relevant documents could be found when needed.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. serves clients virtually throughout California from its in-person office in Novato. A conversation can help you focus on the purpose of an advance health care directive and the distinction between expressing wishes and identifying someone to make health-care decisions.