What Is A Living Will?

LIVING WILL is a term that has been used more and more in the past twenty years without anyone really understanding what it means. Some states have documents called a Living Will, but in Texas the term has no legal meaning.

People using the term in Texas usually mean one or a combination of three different documents:

A Last Will and Testament;

A Medical Power of Attorney; or an

Advance Directive to Physicians and Family or Surrogates.

When someone asks for a Living Will, the most likely document they want is the Advance Directive to Physicians. They are concerned about being placed on life support machines without their consent or taken off life support without their consent. Decisions about life support are the reason to prepare an Advance Directive.

Life support decisions are often confused with, or added to, making decisions about medical treatment. Appointing a spokesman who can make medical decisions for a patient, and listing which treatment decisions they can make is done by preparing a Medical Power of Attorney. This document becomes effective when a patient is still alive but is unable to express their medical treatment decisions to their doctors and other caregivers.

Occasionally someone will use the term Living Will in place of Last Will and Testament. Once it is made clear that a Will is only effective after a person’s death, they realize they want to prepare a Will and that they need the other estate planning documents for medical treatment decisions.

Finally, some people put all of the Estate Planning documents they think they need under the term Living Will and it takes some time to sort out what they really want to do and then explain about the different types of Estate Planning documents and how they work together.