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Advance Directives to Salvage Your Dignity and Money

Advance directives constitute Living will, health care proxies or durable health care directives. What are these instruments and what purpose does it serve? No wonder such questions are quite common since until recently only 15 to 20 percent of the American population had a living will executed. The figure was later on increased to 37 percent and the rest of the population is now seriously considering making a living will ever since the Terry Schiavo case became popular and the legal debate on the issue began.

Though all the states of the United states of America recognizes the living will and the designation of the health care proxy many still has to meet the expected standards of the model uniform rights for the terminally ill Act. Such being the situation drafting a foolproof living will is the one and only solution for the farsighted.

If you need to be too blunt you may call the living will as a documented death wish that has legal bindings on the relatives and the health care professionals. However in the legal parlance it is known as a living will that takes care of the preferred treatment for the patient that is incapacitated to decide or declare the wish of death by removing or rejecting all or any of the medicines or life support or on the other hand the wish to prolong the life clinically as long as one desires in anticipation of a miracle or medical innovation.

The need for a living will is not only from the point of one’s liberty to accept the inevitable but also from the care and consideration for the surviving close relatives. One may well appreciate that no purpose is going to serve by making your entire earnings or estates being spent on the life prolonging treatment or keeping you clinically alive forgetting the very value of dignified death. Opinions differ and I am not to air views on the controversial and debatable point.

A living will is a legal document of ones’ wish about the preferred treatment or non treatment for self in case of a terminal illness or accident executed under the signature of the executor witnessed and distributed among relatives, health care providers, hospitals and all concerned. It details the treatment preferred or despised by the executor like administration of drugs, medicines, support of life sustaining devices, tubular food, hydration and others to sustain the life in a state of coma or incapacitated stage. In short it is a will to accept the inevitable death early or to prolong the life by means of artificial intervention as per one’s desire. In either case, the living will help to save the relatives and the doctors from many disputes and controversial decisions.

A living will can be as broad as possible or as brief as one wish to make. However it is well advised to make it as clear as possible. One need not take the service of an attorney and it is enough the required forms are filled up and the forms get properly witnessed. Your relatives, physicians and health care providers are bound by the document and you no longer have to worry about the decisions on the continuance or severing of the treatment to prolong or shorten the life in case you fall into a coma or become incapacitated to take and inform the decisions. It would be better still to support the living will by another document called health care power of attorney so that based on the spirit of your will any decisions on the treatment that is not clear in the living will can be taken by the proxy you have nominated. You owe a minimum responsibility to you and to your near and dear ones and drafting a living will is the first step towards this end.