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About Advanced Directives
Our advice about Advance Directives is a little different from most advisors. That’s because we’ve had more direct experience with the issues involved than most others.
For example, we ourselves don’t have Advance Directives, and we don’t advise our clients to have them, either. Advance Directives attempt to consider the possible situations you may find yourself in, in terms of your medical prognosis and ability to make decisions for yourself, and “fill in the blank” for each situation. We think this is foolhardy, because life is complicated, and it is impossible to take into account all the possible permutations of events which happen in real life to real people.
Instead, we advise our clients to have a designation of health-care surrogate and health-care power of attorney. Choose one person, whom you truly trust, and who fully understands your preferences and attitudes, and let that person make your decisions in your place, should it become necessary. That is the best way to provide for emergency decision-making, to make sure that life-and-death decisions aren’t made for you by a stranger.
But, it doesn’t stop there. What you need, even more than a surrogate decision-maker, is an advocate. Your surrogate should be someone with the strength of character and knowledge to stand up to the medical professionals (and insurance gate-keepers), ask the hard questions, even get second opinions if indicated, and do all that on one of the hardest days of your (and possibly your surrogate’s) life.
Not everyone is equipped to do that. Obviously, careful consideration should be given to the selection of your surrogate.
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Advance Directives
