Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills in Fountain Valley

Clarify what you want the document to do

Before relying on a document, consider whether you are trying to record treatment preferences, identify a person to make health-care decisions, or address both. An advance health care directive can do both, but the two functions should not be treated as interchangeable. A person chosen to make decisions may need to understand your wishes; written instructions can communicate those wishes even when you are not available to explain them.

A useful starting point is to talk through the kinds of health-care choices you want addressed and what matters most to you. Keep the focus on communicating your own preferences. This planning conversation is not a substitute for medical advice about a particular treatment or condition.

• List the preferences you want to communicate, using language that you and the people close to you can understand.
• Consider separately whom you want identified to make health-care decisions.
• Note any questions or situations you want to discuss with your health-care professionals.

Written instructions and an agent serve different purposes

An advance health care directive may combine instructions about health care with the identification of a decision-maker. Still, writing down wishes does not itself answer whether the person identified is the person you want involved, and naming someone does not necessarily explain your preferences. Review each part of the document with its purpose in mind.

A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial decisions, not the health-care role described by an advance health care directive. If you are reviewing more than one planning document, keep the roles distinct rather than assuming one document covers the other.

• Ask whether the document expresses the health-care wishes you intend to communicate.
• Ask whether it identifies the person you intend to make health-care decisions.
• Keep financial decision-making authority separate from health-care planning.

Make the document useful to the people who may need it

A document can only help communicate your wishes if the relevant people can find and refer to it when needed. Preparing the document and keeping it accessible are practical steps distinct from registering information about an executed directive. Registration information is not the directive itself, so do not treat it as a replacement for keeping the document available.

As a preparation step, consider who should know where the directive is kept and how those people can access it. You may also want to tell the person you identify that the document exists and discuss the preferences it contains. These are practical communication choices, not a guarantee that every person or care setting will have the document at the moment it is needed.

• Choose a storage location that can be found by the people likely to need the document.
• Tell relevant people where it is kept and consider sharing an accessible copy.
• If you use a registry, distinguish its information about a directive from the directive itself.

Review the document before relying on it

Before relying on an existing directive, compare its written preferences and named decision-maker with what you currently intend. Check whether the document is accessible to the people who may need it, and whether the person identified understands the role you have in mind. If your preferences or chosen person have changed, discuss how to address that change rather than assuming an old document still reflects your intentions.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. can discuss advance health care directives and living wills through virtual services for clients across California. A practical next step is to gather the document, write down what you want it to communicate, and prepare questions about the roles of written instructions and the person identified.