Can I Decline Medical Treatment with an Advance Directive?
An important part of estate planning for all adults in Georgia is the creation of a Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care. This document combines different types of advance directives, which are materials through which a person can indicate future health care decisions if they become unable to make decisions themselves due to incapacity. The Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care has three primary components: the appointment of a health care agent (also commonly known as a health care power of attorney), a person’s treatment preferences (commonly known as a living will), and guardianship.
The first and last components involve naming a person who can make certain decisions on your behalf in the event of your incapacity. The second component — treatment preferences, or your living will — is the document that specifically allows you to indicate your preferences for medical treatment in the event of your future incapacity. Can you also use this document to decline certain forms of medical treatment? The answer is yes, and our Norcross estate planning lawyers can explain in more detail.
Treatment Preferences (or Living Will) Allows You to Accept or Decline Certain Types of Medical Treatment
You can accept or decline certain forms of treatment under your treatment preferences in your Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care. As far as declining certain forms of treatment goes, you can indicate that you want your health care providers to allow your natural death to occur, which means that you “do not want any medications, machines, or other medical procedures” that would be used to keep you alive but that could not cure you.
You also have the option to decline all of the above with specific exceptions, such as nutrition or fluids by tube, use of a ventilator, or use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
Treatment Preferences Only Becomes Effective in the Event of Terminal Illness or Permanent Unconsciousness
It is important to know that your treatment preferences — the second section of the Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care — will only become effective “if you are unable to communicate your treatment preferences after reasonable and appropriate efforts have been made to communicate with you about your treatment preferences.” Georgia law generally understands that to mean one of the following two circumstances:
- You have a terminal condition, which is considered “an incurable or irreversible condition” that will result in your death “in a relatively short period of time”; or
- You are in a state of permanent unconsciousness, which means you are “in an incurable or irreversible condition” in which you are not aware of yourself or your environment, and you “show no behavioral response” to your environment.
Contact a Gwinnett County Estate Planning Lawyer for Help Today
Creating a Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care is essential for adults of all ages — not just to specify the types of care that you do want to receive in the event that you become incapacitated and cannot voice your decisions, but also to specify the types of life-prolonging treatment that you may wish to decline. An experienced Gwinnett County estate planning attorney at Bowman Law Firm can work with you today to complete all of the components of an advance directive along with other critical estate planning documents and tools. Contact us for assistance.
Source:
aging.georgia.gov/get-advance-directives
