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While it is hard to think about end-of-life affairs, death is an essential part of life. When you die, it is hard to imagine how your loved ones will handle the aftermath. Your advance health directives provide them with a set of instructions regarding how to handle certain medical decisions.
Your family members may rely on an advance health directives if any of the below examples happens to a family member:
- Incapacitation
- Terminal illness
- Unconsciousness
- Life support decisions
- Organ donation preferences
- Ceremonial preferences
- Burial or cremation preferences
Your family members will already be stressed during this difficult time, so make things easier on them by creating an advance health directive. Everything you need to know is contained within the article below.
What is an Advance Health Directive?
Advance health directives, also called a “living will,” is a personal directive that you leave to your medical power of attorney to make medical decisions as your healthcare proxy if you are unable to do so in a hospital. You can appoint your healthcare proxy through a durable power of attorney. An advance health directive generally prescribes how to handle specific medical events, such as a terminal illness, as you would if you could consciously make them.
Who Needs an Advance Health Directive?
Everyone should have an advance health directive since everyone has legal rights and may face medical events in the blink of an eye. While it may not be readily apparent, your advance health directive is an essential gift to your loved one. Instead of fretting about your condition as well as making medical decisions, they will have a signed piece of paper in your words that take this burden off their plate.
Here’s another article about advance health directives.
Types of Advance Directives
Advance directives were designed to allow someone to make decisions in your absence regarding every area of your life. If you become incapacitated, your healthcare proxy is better off having authority and direction so that they can follow through on your wishes. There are different types of advance health and financial directives that you will want to create in a comprehensive estate plan.
Types of advance directives include:
- Financial power of attorney
- Advance financial directive
- Medical power of attorney
- Advance health directive
- Living will
You should also name an individual you trust implicitly, such as a spouse, parent, or adult-aged child. The person you name in these directives will essentially have complete control over your health and finances. Ensure that you have the right person in place.
This article also discusses advance directives.
Parts of an Advance Health Directive
There are key components that every advance health directive should contain to serve its intended purpose. Carefully consider the decisions that you will have to make. It can be unpleasant to think about some of these issues, but it is essential that your family has guidance and support in your voice during an already emotionally difficult moment.
Parts of an advance directive include:
- State your name
- Acknowledge of authority
- Ceremonial and burial/cremation preferences
- Living will directives for terminal conditions and vegetative states
- Other wishes related to organ donations and autopsies
- Signature and dateline
- Witness signature and dateline
Upon signing, your advance health directive is active. Make sure that your durable power of attorney understands expectations and offers clarity if they have questions. A thorough strategy always achieves better results when it comes to estate planning.
You will also want to become familiar with key terms specific to advance health directives, such as:
- Term 1. Advance health directive
- Term 2. Artificial life support
- Term 3. Durable power of attorney
- Term 4. End-of-life-care
- Term 5. Living will
- Term 6. Organ donation
- Term 7. Persistent vegetative state
- Term 8. Terminal health condition
- Term 9. Tissue donation
Upon completing your advance health directive, do not share it with your medical provider. If you later decide to update your advance health directive, and they have an old copy on file, your doctor will use that one instead. You simply need to let your loved ones know that you have an advance health directive in case the unthinkable happens.
Here’s an article about medical and financial directives.
Examples of an Advance Health Directive
Advanced health directives address any medical situation that you could face in an unconscious or limited state. These directives are provided to a trusted individual, like a partner, spouse, or adult child, who can carry them out according to your wishes. There are more specific scenarios that come into play when using an advance health directive.
Five examples of when you would use an advance health directive include:
- Indicating that you want to donate your body to science
- Providing instructions to a spouse in case you’re on life support
- Communicating how you would like to handle end-of-life affairs
- Specifying which organs you are comfortable donating to science
- Establishing whether or not to leave your body on life support
There are other situations in which you may rely on a health directive. However, they are generally limited to end-of-life medical decisions. Do not feel guilty about expressing your true desires and get help with advance health directives from a licensed attorney in your state.
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Get Help with an Advance Health Directive
Get help with an advance health directive by speak with estate planning lawyers . Not only is it a smart, practical way to handle things legally, but they also offer reassurance. They will guarantee that your loved ones have the information they need to make decisions on your behalf.
Here are a few other compelling reasons as to why you should hire estate planning lawyers to get help with an advance health directive.
How Estate Planning Lawyers Help
If you think about it, hiring an attorney is a way to pay someone else to take on your legal problems. Your lawyer has a legal obligation and duty to not take any legal chances. It becomes their liability and problem otherwise, which leaves your family in the clear should an issue arise after your passing.
Estate planning lawyers can also help you tackle other issues related to your end-of-life affairs, including:
- Avoiding probate
- Taking tax advantages
- Transferring wealth
- Protecting your assets
- Providing for your family
- Legal drafting of documents
- Public notary services
Your attorney can draft a living trust, pour-over will, last will and testament, advance health directives, and powers of attorney . Consider discussing your case with a legal professional as soon as possible. Doing so will help you install an advance health directive as quickly as possible while considering all of your legal needs and desires.
Cost of Hiring Estate Planning Lawyers
The legal industry is responding to consumer demands. Estate planning lawyers can draft your health directives for a fairly affordable fixed cost. However, you may decide to draft a more comprehensive estate plan, which can significantly increase your fixed costs.
Other Estate Planning Documents
You may have other legal needs to fulfill when it comes to estate planning. Your attorney will incorporate them into your overall project to ensure that every objective is accounted for. They can offer suggestions, strategies, and insights that you will not find online.
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Meet some of our Advance Health Directive Lawyers
Samuel R.
My career interests are to practice Transactional Corporate Law, including Business Start Up, and Mergers and Acquisitions, as well as Real Estate Law, Estate Planning Law, Tax, and Intellectual Property Law. I am currently licensed in Arizona, Pennsylvania and Utah, after having moved to Phoenix from Philadelphia in September 2019. I currently serve as General Counsel for a bioengineering company. I handle everything from their Mergers & Acquisitions, Private Placement Memorandums, and Corporate Structures to Intellectual Property Assignments, to Employment Law and Beach of Contract settlements. Responsibilities include writing and executing agreements, drafting court pleadings, court appearances, mergers and acquisitions, transactional documents, managing expert specialized legal counsel, legal research and anticipating unique legal issues that could impact the Company. Conducted an acquisition of an entire line of intellectual property from a competitor. In regards to other clients, I am primarily focused on transactional law for clients in a variety of industries including, but not limited to, real estate investment, property management, and e-commerce. Work is primarily centered around entity formation and corporate structure, corporate governance agreements, PPMs, opportunity zone tax incentives, and all kinds of business to business agreements. I have also recently gained experience with Estate Planning law, drafting numerous Estate Planning documents for people such as Wills, Powers of Attorney, Healthcare Directives, and Trusts. I was selected to the 2024 Super Lawyers Southwest Rising Stars list. Each year no more than 2.5% of the attorneys in Arizona and New Mexico are selected to the Rising Stars. I am looking to further gain legal experience in these fields of law as well as expand my legal experience assisting business start ups, mergers and acquisitions and also trademark registration and licensing.
Phocus L.
G'day, my name is Michele! I work with startups, entrepreneurs and small/medium-sized businesses across the country in a wide array of industries. I help them with all of their ongoing, daily legal needs. This includes entity formation, M&A, contract drafting and review, employment, asset sale & acquisition, and business sales or shareholder exits. I'm half-Australian, half-Italian, and I've lived the last 20+ years of my life in America. I've lived all over the USA, completing high school in the deep south, graduating cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis, and then cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center. After law school I worked for the Los Angeles office of Latham & Watkins, LLP. After four intense and rewarding years there, I left to become General Counsel and VP of an incredible, industry-changing start-up called Urban Mining Company (UMC) that manufactures rare earth permanent magnets. I now work for Phocus Law where I help run our practice focused on entrepreneurs, startups, and SMEs. I love what I do, and I'd love to be of help! My focus is on providing stress-free, enjoyable, and high-quality legal service to all of my clients. Being a good lawyer isn't enough: the client experience should also be great. But work isn't everything, and I love my free time. I've been an avid traveler since my parents put me on a plane to Italy at 9-months old. I'm also a music nut, and am still looking for that perfect client that will engage me to explain why Dark Side Of The Moon is the greatest album of all time. Having grown up in a remote, and gorgeous corner of Australia, I feel a strong connection to nature, and love being in the elements.
Anand A.
Anand is an entrepreneur and attorney with a wide-ranging background. In his legal capacity, Anand has represented parties in (i) commercial finance, (ii) corporate, and (iii) real estate matters throughout the country, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Arizona, and Georgia. He is well-versed in business formation and management, reviewing and negotiating contracts, advising clients on financing strategy, and various other arenas in which individuals and businesses commonly find themselves. As an entrepreneur, Anand is involved in the hospitality industry and commercial real estate. His approach to the legal practice is to treat clients fairly and provide the highest quality representation possible. Anand received his law degree from Rutgers University School of Law in 2013 and his Bachelor of Business Administration from Pace University, Lubin School of Business in 2007.
Kimbrelly K.
Attorney Kegler has been licensed to practice law in the State of North Carolina since 1998. Over the years, she has worked in firms that focused on small business financing, initial startup formation, to starting several businesses of her own with bootstrap financing to venture capital funding. As a Certified Dream Manager, she couples the skills of listening to understand the big picture to get to solutions that not only fit today's needs but also the long term needs of her entrepreneurial clients.
Christina S.
I am an attorney who has been practicing for over a decade, experienced in multiple areas of law, both from a litigation and more procedural side. The great thing about my practice is that it has trained me to deal with so many different types of problems and to find solutions in a variety of legal scenarios that are almost never similar.
November 2, 2022
Maigan W.
Maigan is a registered nurse and attorney with tech law experience, specifically in Web3, including NFTs. Maigan acted as general counsel for a NFT platform for two years and speaks and understands smart contracts. As a registered nurse, Maigan is in a unique position to understand health law issues and graduated with a concentration in health law distinction. Maigan is happy to help you create a business entity, draft and negotiate contracts and agreements, apply for trademarks, draft terms of service and privacy notices, draft terms of sale for NFT drops, draft web3 licenses, and act as a consultant for other attorneys looking for someone who understands web3 and NFTs. Maigan speaks conversational Spanish.
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David W.
Founder David W. Weygandt, the Singing Lawyer, is passionate about helping families and businesses stay in tune with what they care about and avoid conflict. When injustice has been done, David is proud to stand up to the modern Goliath and vindicate your rights on your behalf. David lives and practices law in The Woodlands, Texas, and assists clients all across Texas.
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ContractsCounsel User
Health Care Directive
Location: Florida
Turnaround: Over a week
Service: Drafting
Doc Type: Advance Health Directive
Number of Bids: 4
Bid Range: $175 - $500
ContractsCounsel User
Living will
Location: Arizona
Turnaround: Over a week
Service: Drafting
Doc Type: Advance Health Directive
Number of Bids: 2
Bid Range: $300 - $750
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