Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Los Gatos

Separate treatment preferences from the person you identify

Written preferences and identifying a health-care decision-maker address different questions. The preferences communicate what you want the directive to say about your health care; identifying someone names a person to make health-care decisions. An advance health care directive can serve both purposes.

Start by considering what you want others to know about your wishes. Separately, consider whom you want identified to make health-care decisions. You do not have to treat one choice as a substitute for the other: the document can include wishes as well as identify a decision-maker.

For example, you might make a list of the preferences you want recorded, then separately write down questions you want to discuss with the person you are considering naming. This is a preparation suggestion, not a rule about what your directive must contain.

• What health-care wishes do you want the document to communicate?
• Whom do you want identified to make health-care decisions?
• Who should know where the document is kept?

Understand the document’s scope

An advance health care directive concerns health-care wishes and health-care decisions. A financial power of attorney serves a different financial role. If you are thinking about who may address financial matters, treat that as a separate planning question rather than relying on the health-care document to answer it.

Keeping the questions distinct can make a planning discussion more focused: what you want communicated about health care, whom you want identified for health-care decisions, and whether you have a separate financial-planning question. These are related parts of planning, but the directive and financial power of attorney serve different roles.

You can prepare questions about your preferences and the document’s purpose without trying to resolve medical questions in the document-planning process. The practical focus here is recording the wishes you want to express and making the relevant document accessible to people who may need it.

Plan for access as well as content

A document can communicate wishes only if the people who may need it can find it. As an optional preparation step, consider where you plan to keep the relevant document and which people should know how to locate it. You can also make a short list of questions about access to discuss when preparing or revisiting your planning documents.

Keeping relevant documents accessible is distinct from registering information about an executed directive. These are separate tasks: one concerns access to the document itself, while the other concerns registration of information about it. Do not treat one as a substitute for the other.

A useful preparation list might include your existing planning documents, the preferences you want to communicate, the person you are considering identifying, and any questions about document access or registration. This list is simply a way to organize a discussion; it is not a statement of legal requirements.

• Note the preferences you want to communicate.
• List questions about whom to identify and how others can locate the document.
• Keep document access and registration as separate considerations.

Planning support for Los Gatos

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. has one in-person office at 802 Grant Ave, Novato, California, and provides virtual services throughout California, including Los Gatos.

A practical next step is to gather any existing planning documents and write down the health-care preferences and document-access questions you want to address. That preparation can help keep the discussion centered on what you want the directive to communicate and how the people who may need it can find it.