Dixon Advance Health Care Directives and Living Wills

Start with the decision you want a document to address

Consider whether your main concern is recording your own health-care wishes, identifying someone to make health-care decisions, or both. An advance health care directive can express health-care wishes and identify someone to make health-care decisions. Those functions can appear together, but they are different questions to think through.

This page focuses on treatment preferences: what you want written down and how to make that information available to people who may need it. If your main concern is choosing or evaluating a health-care decision-maker, consider that as a separate planning discussion rather than treating the written preferences as a substitute for that choice.

• What preferences do you want documented?
• Do you also need to consider who should make health-care decisions?
• Who might need to know where your current documents are kept?

Compare the documents by their purpose

An advance health care directive is the document to consider when you want to express health-care wishes. It can also identify someone to make health-care decisions. A financial power of attorney has a different purpose: it serves a financial role, rather than recording health-care wishes or assigning health-care decision-making authority.

If you have a financial power of attorney, do not assume it answers your treatment-preference questions. Compare what each document is intended to address, then identify any concern that remains unanswered. This is a purpose-based comparison, not a conclusion that you need to replace or add a document.

• Advance health care directive: consider for health-care wishes and the health-care decision-maker question.
• Financial power of attorney: consider for financial matters, not as a substitute for health-care planning.

Use your existing documents to decide what to revisit

Before deciding what to change, gather the health-care documents and financial power of attorney you already have. Read them with two questions in mind: do they reflect the preferences you want to communicate, and do they address the role you intend each document to serve? Make a note of unclear language or subjects you want to discuss.

For example, you might find that your existing directive records preferences but that you want to reconsider whether it also identifies the person you intend to make health-care decisions. That is a reason to discuss the distinction and your goals; it does not, by itself, establish that a particular change is required.

• Bring the documents you currently rely on.
• Write down the preferences or document language you want to review.
• Note who should be able to locate the documents if they are needed.

Plan for access as well as content

Preparing a document and keeping it accessible to the people who may need it are separate practical concerns. Think about where the relevant documents are kept and how the appropriate people would know where to find them. A document’s usefulness can depend on more than having written preferences; consider how those preferences and the document itself will be available when relevant.

There is also a distinction between preparing and keeping documents accessible and registering information about an executed directive. Registration is not a substitute for deciding what preferences to express or for making the relevant documents accessible.

Discuss the comparison with Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C.

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. has one in-person office in Novato and provides virtual services throughout California. For a planning discussion, bring the documents you want to compare and a short list of treatment preferences or questions you would like to address. The practical next step is to identify what each document currently does for you and what you want to clarify before deciding whether any change is appropriate.