Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills for Mountain View Residents

Start with what you want the document to do

Before choosing a service, separate two questions. First, what health-care wishes do you want expressed in writing? Second, do you want to identify someone to make health-care decisions? An advance health care directive can address both. Thinking through the questions separately can help you decide whether your immediate priority is recording preferences, naming a decision-maker, or addressing both.

This page focuses on documenting treatment preferences and making the resulting information available. If your main concern is selecting and evaluating a health-care agent, that is a distinct planning question. A useful discussion can still consider how written wishes and the person named to decide relate to one another, without treating them as interchangeable.

• Which health-care preferences do you want to communicate in writing?
• Do you also want to identify someone to make health-care decisions?
• What would help the people involved locate and understand your instructions?

Understand what written instructions do—and do not do

An advance health care directive can express health-care wishes and identify a person to make health-care decisions. It is not the same as a financial power of attorney: that document serves a financial role, rather than the health-care role described here. If your planning concern involves someone managing financial matters, treat that as a separate issue to discuss rather than assuming health-care instructions address it.

Written preferences communicate what matters to you; naming a decision-maker addresses who may make health-care decisions. A document that addresses both does not remove the importance of making your wishes understandable to the people who may need to refer to them. Consider the practical consequence of each choice: instructions without an identified decision-maker may not answer who you want involved, while identifying someone alone may not communicate the preferences you want recorded.

Make accessibility part of the plan

Preparing a directive and keeping the relevant documents accessible are practical parts of planning. Registration is a separate step: information about an executed directive may be registered, but registration is distinct from preparing the document and keeping it accessible. Do not treat registration as a substitute for having the document available to the people who may need it.

As a preparation step, consider where you will keep the relevant documents and how the people you want involved will know where to find them. You can also make a short list of the preferences you want to discuss. These are planning prompts, not legal requirements; they can help focus a conversation about what the document should communicate.

Choose the right planning conversation

This service may be a fit if you want to document health-care wishes, consider whether to name a health-care decision-maker, or clarify how to make the documents accessible. If your central question is instead who should manage finances, a financial power of attorney serves a different role and should be considered separately.

A practical next step is to write down the preferences you want to communicate and the questions you have about naming a decision-maker or sharing the documents. Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. can discuss advance health care directive planning virtually with clients throughout California, including Mountain View residents. The conversation can help clarify which of these planning purposes you want to address.