LIVING WILLS & HEALTHCARE
"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome." Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)
"One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation." Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
"We seem to believe it is possible to ward off death by following rules of good grooming." Don Delillo
While the circumstantial evidence suggests that you can't ward off death, you can exert some control over the circumstances, time and manner of its occurence. Please contact our firm today at (603) 431-3430 to arrange for a Living Will, Durable Power Of Attorney and a Durable Power Of Attorney For Healthcare.
A Living Will is typically a legal directive stating that if you should become terminally ill and unable to express your preferences, you want your doctors and family to permit you to die as naturally as possible, without administering medical treatment to artificially prolong your life. In other words, when your time comes, you want to them to let you go.
A Durable Power Of Attorney gives your agent authority to make decisions, concerning your money, property, or both, and to use your money, property or both on your behalf.
A Durable Power Of Attorney For Healthcare gives the person you name as your health care agent the power to make health care decisions for you when you lack the capacity to make decisions for yourself including the authority to consent (give permission) or refuse to consent, or withdraw consent to life-sustaining medical treatment and /or artificial nutrition.
Among the advantages of a Durable Power Of Attorney For Healthcare over a Living Will is that a durable power of attorney allows you to provide for as many specific contingencies as you like or, if you have comlete confidence in the judgment of your agent or attorney-in-fact, simply turn over to him or her the power to make all necessary decisions in light of then existing circumstances.
A Durable Power Of Attorney For Healthcare can express your preferences in either direction, meaning a DPOA is as good for protecting your right to have life-sustaining medical treatment and/or artificial nutrition as for protecting your right not to have it.
What happens if you become mentally incapable of looking after your affairs and haven't executed any of the documents described above? A friend or relative can go into court, present evidence of your incompetency and request the appointment of a Guardian over your person an/or estate. If a Judge appoints a Guardian, the person appointed becomes responsible for handling all your affairs. A Durable Power of Attorney can achieve the same result with the advantage of ensuring that your agent or attorney-in-fact is someone of your own choosing who will enforce your wishes.
Why go to the trouble of executing a Durable Power Of Attorney For Healthcare? Try to imagine yourself in Terri Schiavo's situation - indefinitely comatose and brain dead, with no hope of recovery. Your family could feel they are betraying you or in conflict if they have to make the decision to let you go or not. You can spare them some of this pain if you have previously indicated what you want done. And imagine the costs of keeping a terminally ill, comatose and/or rain dead patient "alive" for years if not decades. Ask people why they work hard and save their money, and they will usually answer it's because they want to leave something behind for their children. If you haven't executed a Living Will, Durable Power Of Attorney and/or Durable Power Of Attorney For Healthcare, you could be leaving the financial goals of a lifetime at risk.
Withholding life-sustaining medical treatment in no way means withholding pain relieving medical treatment. Most living wills and durable powers of attorney explicitly request that treatment be provided to whatever extent necessary to keep the patient free of pain, the goal being to relieve suffering, rather than permit or forcing it to continue. And, these directives do not go into effect, if there is even a possibility of recovery.
What you should know about making medical decisions for someone else.