Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Portola Valley Residents

First decide what you want the document to do

Start with the purpose of your review. Are you trying to record health-care wishes, identify someone to make health-care decisions, or understand a document you already have? An advance health care directive can address both health-care wishes and identification of someone to make health-care decisions. Those are connected, but distinct, questions.

If your immediate concern is treatment preferences, focus on whether the written wishes you want to communicate are reflected in the documents you are reviewing. Separately consider whether you also want the directive to identify someone to make decisions. Thinking through the two functions separately helps you identify what question remains without assuming that one answer resolves the other.

Compare documents by the decisions they address

An advance health care directive is relevant to health-care wishes and to identifying someone to make health-care decisions. A financial power of attorney has a different role: it concerns financial decisions. If you are sorting through several planning documents, compare their purposes rather than treating similar-sounding planning terms as interchangeable.

The phrase “living will” may appear in a document or in your own notes. For a useful review, look at the document’s actual contents and ask whether it expresses health-care wishes, identifies someone to make health-care decisions, or addresses a different subject. The label alone may not answer the practical question you are trying to resolve.

Review what you have before deciding what to revisit

Gather the documents you believe relate to health-care decisions and identify the specific concern that prompted your review. For each document, ask: Does it express health-care wishes? Does it identify someone to make health-care decisions? Is it instead about financial decisions? These questions help distinguish the roles described by the documents without assuming that everything needs to be replaced.

A practical preparation step is to bring copies of relevant documents and make a short list of the parts you want to keep, clarify, or discuss. You can also note any uncertainty about what a document is meant to cover. These are optional ways to organize a planning conversation, not legal requirements.

• Write down the health-care preferences you want to discuss, in your own words.
• List separately any questions about who should make health-care decisions and which document addresses financial decisions.

Consider access separately from preparing the directive

Preparing relevant documents and keeping them accessible are distinct from registering information about an executed directive. When reviewing your arrangements, consider where the relevant document is kept and how the people who may need it could locate it.

You can also consider whether registering information about an executed directive is a separate step you want to explore. Treat that question separately from deciding what the directive should communicate and where the document itself will be kept. The registration of information does not take the place of considering the document’s contents or accessibility.

Bring the comparison to a focused planning discussion

A productive next step is to identify the purpose of each document you have and the gap, if any, that you want to address: communicating health-care wishes, identifying someone to make health-care decisions, or addressing financial decisions. Bring the documents and your questions so the discussion can focus on the choices you are considering, rather than treating every planning document as serving the same function.

For Portola Valley residents, Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. provides virtual services statewide from its practice, with its in-person office in Novato. A focused review can help you decide what you want to clarify about your written preferences and the role of an advance health care directive.