Living Wills

A Living Will, also known as an Advance Decision, is a legal document that allows you to set out your wishes for the refusal of medical treatment in the future.

Your Living Will would give instructions to your doctors if there came a time when you were unable to make decisions or communicate your own wishes.

You can use a Living Will to tell your doctors:

• The types of treatment you don’t want to receive.
• When you’d want life-sustaining treatment to be withdrawn.
• Not to resuscitate you in specific circumstances.

A Living Will has to be properly drawn up to ensure that it is legally valid. Provided that it is, then it must be respected by those giving you medical care.

If you want some control over how you’re treated if you lose capacity, it’s important to consider making a Living Will.

You’ll need to think about:

• The circumstances in which you wouldn’t want to receive treatment.
• Whether you’d want specific treatment or medication even if it could shorten your life.
• Whether you should make a Lasting Power of Attorney for your healthcare.

You may also want to discuss matters with a healthcare professional who knows about your medical history and family so that they understand your wishes.

Yes. You can expressly state that treatment is to be withdrawn or not given at all in specific circumstances.

You can’t use a Living Will to ask for specific treatment to be given and you can’t ask for your life to be ended due to the laws against assisted suicide and euthanasia.

A Lasting Power of Attorney for health and welfare allows you to nominate a specific person to make decisions on your behalf about your healthcare if you’ve lost mental capacity.

You cant’ nominate someone to make decisions in a Living Will. A Living Will has to refer to specific types of treatment and the circumstances in which you refuse treatment.

A Lasting Power of Attorney for health and welfare can cover a wider range of decisions rather than just those relating to the refusal of treatment. For example, you can give a specific person the ability to decide:

• Where you should live
• Your day-to-day care, including diet and dress
• Who you may have contact with
• Arrangements for dental and optical treatment
• Assessments for and provision of community care services
• Whether you should take part in social activities or leisure activities
• Your personal correspondence and papers
• Rights of access to your personal information
• Complaints about your care and treatment.

If you’re making a Living Will and a Lasting Power of Attorney for health and welfare, it’s important that they don’t invalidate each other by containing conflicting provisions.

We have years of experience in helping clients to plan for end of life decisions and healthcare arrangements. We can advise you on what can and what can’t appear in a Living Will to ensure that it is legally valid and won’t be disregarded.