Understanding Advance Directives in Illinois

Anyone who is working with an estate planning lawyer to make a will or establish a trust should also be thinking carefully about advance directives and their importance to any estate planning process. While many Oak Park residents already know about wills and what they often include and may have a general idea of how trusts work, advance directives are discussed less frequently among families in general. Yet advance directives are extremely important, and they can often provide important benefits not only to the person creating them but also to their loved ones, who can face anxiety and guilt over medical decision-making processes. There are different types of advance directives, and our Oak Park estate planning lawyers can explain how each of them works.

What is an Advance Directive?

What is an advance directive? Advance directives are documents that deal with a person’s health and their right and ability to make certain decisions about their health care.

As the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) explains, “You have the right to make decisions about the health care you get now and in the future,” and an “advance directive is a written statement that you prepare that expresses how you want medical decisions made in the future should you not be able to make them yourself.” Now that you have a better understanding of what we mean when we refer to an “advance directive,” our lawyers can discuss the different types that exist under Illinois law.

Health Care Power of Attorney

The health care power of attorney, sometimes known as a health care proxy in other states, is a document in which you (the “principal”) name a person (the “agent”) who is allowed to make health care decisions on your behalf if you become unable to make those decisions yourself due to incapacitation. A health care power of attorney only takes effect if you cannot make a health care decision yourself, and your agent would be required by law to abide by any specific health care decisions you have already provided.

Living Will

While a living will might sound like the same thing as a general will (or last will and testament), it is actually a very different document. A living will is used to tell any health care providers who treat you if you want to have any “death-delaying procedures” in case you cannot voice these decisions for yourself. In Illinois, this document only takes effect if you have a terminal condition.

Practitioner Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST)

This document tells your doctors or other health care providers whether or not to use CPR if you stop breathing or your heart stops.

Mental Health Treatment Preference Declaration

While most states have the above three types of advance directives in some form, not all have the mental health treatment preference declaration Illinois allows. This document allows a person to say whether or not they want to have electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) or be given any psychotropic medicines if they have a mental illness and cannot make those decisions themselves.

Contact an Oak Park Estate Planning Attorney

Regardless of your age, health, and financial situation, you should work with an Oak Park estate planning lawyer to create advance directives. These documents are extremely important because they ensure that your health wishes are followed without having to place the burden of making difficult decisions on a group of family members — especially adult children — who may disagree about what is in your best interests. Contact the Emerson Law Firm today to learn more about advance directives and about how we can help you with the estate planning process more broadly.



See Related Blog Posts:

Top Reasons to Make a Will

What is the Real Property Transfer on Death Instrument Act?

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