Estate & Family:
Protecting You & Your Family
Estate & Family Planning:
Introduction to Health Care Directive/Living Will
With the increasing ability of medical science to sustain our lives, people are living much longer than ever before. Unfortunately, as we grow older, or if we experience health challenges, we may find ourselves in a position in which decisions need to be made as to how we wish to be treated in a variety of medical situations. This is especially true at the end of our lives, but can be true at any time as a result of the impact of an accident, injury, or illness. If we are in a condition such that we no longer can express our preferences about treatment, decisions will be made for us by others if we have not planned for our own treatment in advance. Advance health care directives allow us to deal with these situations. Without such directives, our families may find it necessary to obtain court orders to deal with our medical situations.
Living Will:
A living will is your written expression of how you want to be treated in certain medical circumstances. This document may permit you to express whether you wish to be given life-sustaining treatments in the event you are terminally ill or injured, to decide in advance whether you wish to be provided food and water via intravenous devices ("tube feeding"), and to give other medical directions that impact your care, including the end of life.
"Life-sustaining treatment" means the use of available medical machinery and techniques, such as heart-lung machines, ventilators, and other medical equipment and techniques that may sustain and possibly extend your life, but which may not by themselves cure your condition.
A living will applies in situations in which the decision to use such treatments may prolong your life for a limited period of time and not obtaining such treatment would result in your death. Having a living will does not mean that medical professionals would deny you pain medications and other treatments that would relieve pain or otherwise make you more comfortable. Living wills do not determine your medical treatment in situations that do not affect your continued life, such as routine medical treatment and non life-threatening medical conditions.
These documents allow you to express your preferences concerning medical treatment in an extreme medical situation when you cannot communicate, including at the end of your life. By expressing such preferences in a written legal document, you are ensuring that your preferences are made known. Physicians prefer these documents because they provide a written expression from you as to your medical care and designate for the physician the person he or she should consult concerning unanswered medical questions. Rather than the physician having to obtain a consensus answer from your family as to your treatment, the physician knows your preferences and knows who you want to provide decisions when you cannot do so. Also, providing such information and designating a health care proxy means that the physician knows whose direction is to be followed in the event your family disagrees as to what medical treatment you would want.
In addition to helping your physician, these documents express your wishes to your family so that they do not have to guess about what you would want. Making your wishes known in advance prevents family members from making hard choices at what likely will be one of the most stressful times in their lives.
“Estate planning dictates your personal intentions in handling your personal and financial affairs and mitigates the possibilities of your loved ones having potential financial hardships and internal family strife. ”