When you are creating an estate plan, you may want to make medical decisions in advance. You can do this with a living will, which is a type of advance directive. For instance, you could write in the living will that you do not want to be resuscitated or kept on life-support. These are very common stipulations with people who are concerned about the financial burden to their family or who just think that it is “their time.”
Another option, though, is to use a medical power of attorney. How is this different from a living will and why would you use it instead?
Selecting a medical agent
The main difference is that you are not making medical decisions in advance. You do not use a medical power of attorney to tell doctors not to keep you on life support or what treatments to avoid. Instead, you use it to choose a medical agent. This agent can then make these types of critical decisions for you after you have become incapacitated.
The advantage here is that you may not be sure what types of treatment you will want in the future. You do not know what your health situation will look like, how serious your medical condition will be or what odds doctors will give you of a full recovery. You need all this information before making these key decisions, but you cannot know it in advance, so you simply choose an agent to make your medical decisions in real time.
These are two different ways to use an estate plan to address your medical future. Carefully consider all of the legal options at your disposal.
