Health Care Directives & Living Wills
An advance health care directive, living will, or durable power of attorney for health care is one of the most important documents a person can adopt. This document authorizes someone you select to make your medical decisions if you are no longer able to make them yourself. The document also specifies your end of life wishes.
The need for this document was exemplified by the national news story of Terri Schiavo. If Terri Schiavo had an advance health care directive, then when she went into a vegetative coma her husband could have quietly asked the doctors to discontinue life support. Because Terri Schiavo did not have this document, her husband had to go to court for authority to discontinue life support. The resulting court battles are what lead the case to national news media attention.
Medical science has advanced to the state that a person's body can be artificially and painfully kept alive when it is trying to die. Machines can breathe for you, beat your heart and feed your artificially. These mechanized processes can result in an extremely expensive, often painful, and long hospital stay prior to death. Your entire estate can be gobbled up in medical costs for that long hospital stay. Often you have no quality of life during the process. A properly executed advance health care directive can authorize your pre-selected health care agent to direct the doctors to allow you to expire naturally, without such a painful, expensive mechanized end.
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