When it comes to Estate Planning, one of the most important things you can do is to to lay out your wishes when it comes to your health later in life. This is in the event that you are not mentally able to make these decisions for yourself, which sadly happens to a number of people.
So instead of it being up to someone else, what you can do instead is lay out your health care wishes now, while you are healthy.
There are two main ways you can handle health care decisions in the future and specifically health care directives.
1) You name the people you know will make the right choice for you and you don’t feel you will need to outline every single situation.
An alternative to that is that you communicate your wishes to the people named on your health care documents. If this is you, great. All you need to do is name that person to make health care decisions.
2) You prefer to give more detail on what your wishes would be when you are in a place where you cannot speak for yourself.
If you want to lay out specific directions now while you are healthy, you’ll want to addresss these 8 health care questions I’ve outlined below.
Let’s get into it.
1. End of life decisions:
How long should the doctors and nurses try to keep you alive? Do you want to take all measures to keep your life going under all circumstances? Do you want to let them try to help you recover for a few weeks or months, but when they in their professional capacity say that you won’t come back, have them not prolong your life?
These will obviously evoke a lot of emotions, and there are more nuances and options here. But the point is you can dictate what you want to happen at the end of your life and the treatment you get.
2. Artificial Nutrition and Hydration:
Receiving artificial nutrition and hydration can prolong your life. Do you want to receive it permanently? Do you want to receive it for a limited time to see if you can improve? Do you not want to receive it at all?
3. Relief from Pain:
This one is pretty straight forward: Do you want to receive pain relief? Or do you want to avoid it?
4. Anatomical Gift at Death:
Do you want to leave your organs behind to benefit others? You can choose to be used as a transplant, for therapy, research, or education.
If you are of the mind that “Take whatever you want – I don’t need it anymore”, then you might select for all of your organs to be donated and used in some way.
But on the other hand, if you don’t want to be, sorry for being graphic, but if you don’t want to be cut up, then you can say that you don’t want to do this.
5. Autopsy:
Do you want to have an autopsy done on your body when you pass away? Or do you want that to be left up to your health care agent?
6. Mental Health Treatments:
Some examples of mental health treatments include admission to and retention at a mental health facility, psychotropic medications, and electroconvulsive treatment.
Do you want to decline mental health treatment in all instances, or do you want to leave it up to your health care agent and any physician at the time to see if your situation warrants it (again we are assuming you cannot make this decision for yourself).
7. Funeral/Burial/Cremation:
Do you have any wishes for your funeral? You can write these down so that your friends and family can follow your wishes.
In terms of whether you want to be buried or cremated, you can put those in your health care directives.
Also, if you’ve prepaid for any of these services, it would be good to include that information in these documents (where is your burial lot, how much did you pay, etc)
8. Physical Health Treatments:
Some examples of physical health treatments include CPR, mechanical breathing, major surgery, kidney dialysis, chemotherapy, diagnostic tests, antibiotics, blood products, etc.
Are you okay with whatever needs to be done here, or do you want to decline any physical health treatments? Or would you like your health care agent to decide?
And that will cover 8 key questions that you should at least consider outlining in your health care directives. Even though you may name someone as your health care agent, answering these questions would be very helpful in assisting them in fulfiling your wishes.
As I’ve said before, I help my clients create their own retirement plan, and in addition to that I work in conjunction with a national Estate Planning firm to help create my clients Estate Plan, which would cover these key questions.
If you’re interested in getting your retirement plan and estate planning done all at once, go ahead and book a call with me at StartMyRetirement.US. We will talk through what it would look like to work together, what you need to do in terms of your retirement and your estate plan, so that you can have a comfortable and fulfilling retirement.