Senior Living
2009-04-01 14:39:00
When should one consider directives
Answer: In short the answer is “NOW”. End of discussion! First though, let’s step back for a minute. Just what exactly are advance directives? How do they affect me? Will they cost me money? Will I be giving up control of my life and/or estate?
Advance directives are legal documents that allow a designated person to carry out our wishes when we are no longer able to do so ourselves. Advance directives consist of Living Wills, Durable Power of Attorney (DPOA) for Health care, Financial Durable Power of Attorney, and Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR). These documents will allow someone else to make their decision for you, but only when you are not able to make these on your own. They can be drawn up by an attorney and be very complicated or you can fill out a basic form and that can be very simple. Either way, they are crucial to have done before something happens. Advance Directives are less effective if you wait until you need them. Oftentimes people wait too long and then the courts have to get involved. The key is that the person making the advance directives must be of sound mind when they put them in place.
Let’s discuss briefly what each of these are. A Living Will is a document that states your wishes about whether or not you would like to be kept on life support, feeding tubes, IV’s etc. Simply put, to what measures do I wish to be kept alive should something happen to me. A Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) is a document that states if I die, do I want extraordinary measures done to bring me back. For example CPR.
A Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care and Financial Durable Power of Attorney are simply documents that allow someone else to act on your behalf when you can no longer do so yourself. The point I want to emphasize here is that even though you may have these documents, it is extremely important that you actually talk about what those wishes are while you can. The DPOA only gives you the authority to act on someone else’s behalf. What you really need to know is what that person would want if they were not able to make those decisions themselves. The one thing I have learned over the years is that it is very easy to tell whether a family has had these discussions about end-of-life. It’s the difference between doing what your loved one wanted and doing what makes you feel better. They are not always the same thing.
To summarize. Now is the time to make your Advance Directives. Now is the time to have that uncomfortable discussion about what if. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
