Planning for future medical care allows your voice to be heard when you can’t speak for yourself, and protects your loved ones during intensely difficult moments. Through healthcare directives and powers of attorney, you can express clear instructions about your wishes and choose trusted decision-makers to ensure that they’re honored should you become incapacitated and unable to make decisions for yourself.
Understanding Healthcare Directives
Healthcare directives allow you to outline your medical treatment choices before a crisis arises. You speak for yourself in advance so your care team and family understand exactly what you want. Directives can include guidance on how to handle life-sustaining care or end-of-life decisions in the event that you can’t express your own wishes.
Common Components of Healthcare Directives
Healthcare directives typically include:
- Living Will: You can describe treatments you would either want or reject during serious illness or end-of-life care, and set limits that match your values and beliefs.
- Treatment Preferences: You can address ventilators, feeding tubes, resuscitation, and other interventions. You can also explain your goals, such as comfort and independence, to help guide your loved ones further.
- End-of-Life Instructions: You can provide guidance for comfort care, pain relief, and spiritual preferences so that your loved ones and medical team clearly understand your final wishes.
Powers of Attorney for Healthcare and Finances
A Power of Attorney (POA) and a Healthcare Directive both allow you to appoint someone you trust to act on your behalf. You choose who speaks for you, and you define their authority in advance. However, it is important to note that they are very different and have very specific uses.
Healthcare Directive
With a healthcare directive, you name a trusted person (called your Agent) to communicate with your doctors and relay your medical instructions to them. You choose someone who understands your beliefs and respects your decisions, and you set boundaries for their authority so they act exactly as you intend.
Financial Power of Attorney
A financial POA lets a trusted person manage your money, property, debts, and legal matters if you lose the ability to handle them. Your agent can pay bills, access accounts, manage insurance issues, and protect your financial stability.
How Healthcare Directives and Powers of Attorney Work Together
A Healthcare Directive and a Power of Attorney serve very different purposes, and one cannot substitute for the other. A Healthcare Directive allows someone to make medical decisions for you and communicate your treatment preferences. A Power of Attorney authorizes someone to handle your financial and legal matters.
When you have both documents in place, you create a complete, coordinated plan. Your Healthcare Directive outlines your medical wishes, and your Power of Attorney appoints a trusted person to manage your financial affairs. Together, they ensure that the right people have the right authority at the right time, without gaps, confusion, or delays.
Preventing Gaps in Decision Making
Your healthcare directive outlines your preferences, while your agent interprets and applies them in real-time situations. You avoid confusion, delays, clashing opinions, and conflict between loved ones.
Avoiding Court Intervention
With clear documents in place, your family does not need to begin guardianship or conservatorship proceedings. You save time and money, and you maintain privacy by empowering people you trust instead of relying on court processes.
How Gratz Law & Mediation PLLC Can Help
Gratz Law & Mediation PLLC guides clients through each step of creating or updating these essential documents. I can help you with:
- Personalized Planning: I’ll listen to your goals, explain your options, and then work with you to craft documents that match your needs.
- Ensuring Compliance: I’ll draft legally sound, easy-to-understand documents that support your choices and protect your family while meeting the state regulations that make your documents valid.
- Updating When Necessary: When circumstances change, I can help you rework your documents to reflect those changes and continue to support your choices.
Contact an Experienced Estate Planning Attorney Today
Healthcare directives and powers of attorney can offer clear guidance to your family when they need it the most. They can also give you a sense of confidence that your wishes will be honored, no matter the circumstances. At Gratz Law & Mediation PLLC, I can help you put these vital documents together and secure your future. Contact me today for your consultation.