How much can my healthcare surrogate designation decide? What if I want to place restrictions on what they can make decisions about?
There are two pieces to this. First, be sure to read our information on a living will as it will go into further details about what a living will can do. Once that’s been attended to, if you have a healthcare delegate, this is what you need to know.
Consider this, you’re in a critical situation and you do not want to be kept alive by artificial machines, but you’re unable to state this. What if your healthcare delegate wants your medical team to keep you alive with artificial machinery even if you remain in a vegetative state? In this instance, you could have restricted the choices that your surrogate can make. Your living will can override their decisions.
Now, not every situation will come to this. But if there are specific things you don’t want them to decide, like if you’ll have a feeding tube, or go on life support, you can state that in your actual document.
Nobody plans for something bad to happen, but by taking the time to create a healthcare surrogate designation, you’ll be able to have a say in your life about who makes your choices when you can’t, and what they also can’t decide.
These are all vital components to your estate planning. We highly recommend that you take the time to speak with a trusted attorney, so you can get all your estate planning needs addressed. At Robinson & Casey, PLLC, we’ll help take the hassle out of your estate planning process.
