When you suffer incapacity after an accident or due to a terminal illness, how do you communicate your wishes regarding certain healthcare decisions, including medications, medical treatments, and life support?

Keep reading as our estate planning team with the Powers & Worshtil, P.C., PC, in Upper Marlboro, MD describes how you can protect your wishes for medical decisions with advance directives and a health care proxy.

What Legal Documents Do You Need for Health and Medical Care Planning?

While most people think of estate planning as the creation of a will or trust to distribute assets to beneficiaries after their passing, one key aspect of estate planning involves planning for end-of-life care during incapacitation.

Called an advance directive, this document is where you determine which health care decisions you would make for yourself and where you name a health care proxy to speak on your behalf in case of incapacity. With these legal documents in place, you can ensure that your healthcare proxy makes the correct medical decisions when you can no longer make them or communicate your wishes.

Naming a Health Care Proxy

Choosing someone to represent your wishes during incapacity can be difficult. Many couples choose their spouse, but others turn to a trusted friend or family member. When selecting a healthcare proxy or healthcare power of attorney, be sure to choose someone you trust to act in your best interests.

Sometimes friends or family have a hard time letting go when tasked with making important medical decisions for a loved one. Others may not understand your religious or personal beliefs about end-of-life care. Choose a healthcare proxy who understands your healthcare decisions and will act appropriately.

Creating a Living Will

Your living will includes the instructions you wish your healthcare proxy to follow when making medical decisions on your behalf. You can outline conditional medical decisions for yourself in a living will, including:

• Life support and other life-prolonging measures
• Palliative care for pain treatment
• Nutrition and hydration measures
• Whether to attempt resuscitation and by what means
• Ongoing treatments such as ventilation, dialysis, etc.
• Whether to donate your organs or body

What If You Don’t Have an Advance Directive?

If you lack an advance directive, a surrogate decision-maker can make medical decisions for you. Surrogate decision makers include (in order):

1. A guardian appointed by the court
2. The incapacitated person’s spouse or domestic partner
3. Adult children
4. Parents
5. Adult siblings
6. A friend or family member with an affidavit certifying their relationship to the patient and their qualifications to represent the patient, including familiarity with the patient’s beliefs and lifestyle

Contact the Powers & Worshtil, P.C., PC, for Advance Directives in Maryland

If you need to create an advance directive in Maryland, turn to our estate planning attorneys at the Powers & Worshtil, P.C., PC. We have served Southern Maryland for four decades creating living wills and healthcare proxies for medical decisions. Call us today at 301-627-1000 or contact us online to schedule a consultation.