Estate Planning Services  |  Advance Medical Directives

Who's making your life & death medical decisions?
Most people are too busy enjoying their lives to think about the "what ifs" of life and death medical situations. However, these people find themselves in dire situations every day, and none planned on it being them.

A little estate planning on your part regarding how a life and death medical situation should be handled will have a big impact on your treatment and the emotional state of your loved ones.

Making your wishes known in an Advance Medical Directive prevents family members from making such choices at one of the most stressful times in their lives. Further, providing such estate planning information means physicians know whose direction to follow in the event your family disagrees on what medical treatment you would want.

And most importantly, without a legal document generated by you, your family may have to obtain court orders to deal with your medical situation. You may recall the Terri Schiavo tragedy, where families battled in court and the media over removing or not removing the feeding tube of the brain-injured woman.

How an Advance Medical Directive works
An Advance Medical Directive allows you to state how important medical decisions for your life are to be carried out. This legal document states your expressed wishes, rather than making your family guess your desires.

This estate planning document expresses whether or not you wish to:
• be given life-sustaining treatments in the event you are terminally ill or injured.
• be provided food and water via intravenous devices.
• use heart-lung machines, ventilators, and other medical equipment and techniques that will sustain and possibly

   extend your life.

An Advance Medical Directive is the appointment of a person to whom you grant authority to make medical decisions in the event you are unable to express your preferences. Most commonly, this situation occurs either because you are unconscious or because your mental state is such that you do not have the legal capacity to make your own decisions.

Normally, a single individual is appointed in your Advance Medical Directive, although it is common for one or more alternate persons be designated in the event your first choice is unavailable.

Why have an Advance Medical Directive
An Advance Medical Directive allows you to express your preferences concerning medical treatment at the end of your life. By expressing such preferences in a written legal document, you are ensuring that your preferences are made known. Physicians prefer these documents because they provide a written expression from you as to your medical care and designate for the physician the person he or she should consult concerning unanswered medical questions.

Rather than the physician having to obtain a consensus answer from your family as to your treatment, the physician knows your preferences and knows who you want to provide decisions when you cannot do so.

Obtaining and maintaining an Advance Medical Directive
Estate Planning attorney Scott N. Alperin of Alperin Law serves individuals and families in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Hampton, Newport News, and Hampton Roads and can provide you with an Advance Medical Directive.

While all states recognize Advance Medical Directives, the law varies as to recognizing a document prepared in another state. It is not necessary to prepare additional documents in case you might vacation in another state. However, if you spend a considerable amount of time living in more than one state, you should consider having Advance Medical Directives prepared in each of the states in which you spend significant periods of time.

Should you change your mind about your Advance Medical Directive, you can simply destroy the document you have and have your estate planning lawyer create a new one. Once you have an Advance Medical Directive, you should keep it among your important estate planning papers.

Make sure a responsible adult, such as the designee named in your medical directive, knows where you keep these documents. If you have a regular physician who keeps your medical records, you should provide a copy of the documents to him or her for your medical records.

In the event you're admitted to a hospital you should take these documents with you at the time you are admitted and permit the hospital to place copies into your medical files. It is also a good idea to discuss the decisions you've made in your documents with family members so they may better know and understand your wishes concerning these matters.

Organ and Tissue Donation
In many states you can include in your Advance Medical Directive your preference to become an organ or tissue donor at the time of death. Even though your Virginia driver's license contains an organ or tissue donor statement, you need to express this by letting your Advance Medical Directive designee, your family, and your physician know your desire to become a donor.


About Alperin Law
Our law firm provides a wide variety of estate planning services including wills, trusts, advance medical directives, estate planning tools, asset protection, minimize estate taxes, beneficiaries, revocable trusts, irrevocable trusts, life insurance trusts, medical powers of attorney, durable powers of attorney, probate and estate administration, and tax planning. Our estate planning attorneys serve clients in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Hampton, Newport News, Hampton Roads, and throughout Virginia.

For a no-cost phone consultation, feel free to call us at (757) 490-3500 or fill out this form.