Advance Healthcare Directive, Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare and Living Will

Advance Healthcare Directive allows you to identify the person you want to make healthcare decisions for you if you can’t take part in decision-making. This person is your healthcare agent.

Gives your healthcare agent or medical team the right to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatments in certain circumstances, which you can identify on the form.

The Utah Advance Health Care Directive takes effect when you can’t make medical decisions for yourself for any reason.

An Advance Healthcare Directive also can be used to state your desires about your healthcare in any situation in which you are unable to make your own decisions, not just when you are in a coma or are terminally ill. In addition, an Advance Healthcare Directive allows you to appoint someone you trust to speak for you when you are incapacitated.

The Advance Healthcare Directive has also replaced the Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare (or “DPAHC”) as the legally recognized document for appointing a health care agent in California. The Advance Healthcare Directive allows you to do more than a DPAHC. An Advance Healthcare Directive permits you not only to appoint an agent, but to give instructions about your own health care. You can now do either or both of these things.

An Advance Healthcare Directive is valid forever, unless you revoke it or state in the form a specific date on which you want it to expire.