Estate Planning, Wills &Trusts

Estate Planning, Wills & Trusts, an information resource.

Lynwood D. Jordan, Jr., Attorney at Law, 115 West Courthouse Square, Cumming, Georgia 30040

Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care

 The Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care is an important document. It is important because it can make things much easier in times of crisis.

What this document does is appoint someone to make health care decisions for you when you are not able to do so. For obvious reasons, you may not be able to nominate someone to do this when it is needed.

Often, one prepares this document for use later in life when age prevents one being able to make decisions, but that event can arrive unexpectedly.

I have a client whose parents lived out of the state of Georgia. They came to Atlanta for medical treatment then, on the way back to their home state just North of Cumming, the wife who was driving pulled out in front of a logging truck which hit on her side of the car and killed her instantly. The husband was taken to Northeast Georgia medical Center in Gainesville. The parents had Durable Powers of Attorney for Health Care which appointed each of them to make decisions for the other - but the wife was deceased. The POA appointed the daughter here as an alternate so that she was able to go to the hospital and give directions for medical treatment of her father with no problems.

The events causing need for these documents can arise unexpectedly.

The word "durable" in the title of the document means it contains language which keeps the document operative in the event of your disability. Normally, a power of attorney ceases to be effective upon the incapacity of the person signing it. All powers of attorney terminate on the death of the person signing the document.

See the page on financial powers of attorney for additional information on this subject.