Living Will Challenges - Alabama Estate Law

Making end of life decisions means generating and updating your living will (or advance health care directive). While these documents often appear simple in comparison to other estate planning documents, that doesn?t mean that the underlying issues they addres aren?t complex.

According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal titled ?A New Look at Living Wills,? unfortunately these issues are only growing increasingly complex.

In its essence, a living will is a document in which you clarify your medical wishes. This allows your loved ones to implement these wishes in the event that you are incapacitated and unable communicate them yourself sometime in the future. With modern medical science, doctors can keep a human body ?alive? long after the ?person? inside has lost what he or she would have regarded as a minimally acceptable quality of life.

With each new advance in medical science, there seem to be more and more ethical and legal dilemmas.

For example, the typical living will contemplates feeding tubes and respirators, but these can maintain a ?persistent vegetative state? leading to shades of gray for the appointed health care agent and physician as they interpret your wishes. Moreover, the boundary between the patient being ?there? or ?not there? is only getting hazier as science progresses. In the end, even physicians don?t always seem to understand the power they may be wielding over life and death.

Planning for your end-of-life scenarios is never easy, nor is it easy to faithfully interpret the wishes of a loved one. Nevertheless, as with all aspects of estate planning, communication with your agents, loved ones, physician and spiritual advisor holds the key to success?however you define it.

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You can learn more about health care directives and living wills in Alabama at the Estate Planning Fundamentals section of our website, AlabamaEstateLaw.com. ?You can also learn more about long-term care planning by watching the video below:

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