For years now, there has been a proliferation of online "do-it-yourself" estate planning websites. Most of these websites even advertise that you don't need to hire an attorney to draft your will or prepare your advanced directive documents (health care power of attorney, living will, etc.). While many of these document are helpful to ensure that you have a plan in place in case of medical emergency or even death, consider this:
Recently, an elderly man was admitted to the intensive care unit with the hospital after flat lining in the emergency room. Because the man was conscious prior to his heart stopping, the hospital did everything it thought it could do to save the man and ultimately stabilized his condition. But the man was unconscious and heavily medicated. The physicians caring for the man, not knowing what other procedures could be done, asked the adult children if there were any life planning documents in place.
This was the beginning of a mass confusion that, in the end, shows that life planning is extremely important and that if you don't have these documents, you need them now. Moreover, having an attorney help you draft these documents will give you someone to talk to should things not go the way you plan for when a medical condition might leave you in a persistent vegetative state - should you not want that.
The man had actually prepared these documents, but they were no where to be found in his home and no one knew where to locate these documents - every logical place having been checked. So the family decided to make additional documents once their father regained consciousness. They actually did a pretty good job preparing these documents from online sources. But when they took them to the hospital and asked whether the hospital administrator and another person could witness the documents, the administrator said she was unfamiliar with the way the documents looked and, therefore, would print out the ones she was familiar with if she was going to witness their signing.
The documents the children prepared were actually very good and one of them was copied directly from the Arizona Revised Statutes. However the hospital administrator refused to be a witness to these documents and instead insisted that her own form would be the correct one to use (see Hospice of the Valley website http://www.hcdecisions.org/). The family said they didn’t care either way as long as the hospital would recognize the documents as a means to facilitate the appropriate health care that their father should receive.
The administrator agreed the hospital would stand behind those documents because those were the ones most frequently used. The next day, the physician caring for the elderly man told the family members that he would not recognize the health care directives for two reasons: one, they did not feel that the man was competent to make health care decisions (even though the staff psychologist declared him to be mentally competent) and two because hospital administrator did not personally know the elderly man.
Now, no where in A.R.S. section 36-3221 does it state that a witness or notary has to personally know the principle designating the power of attorney to the agent. What’s even more shocking is that when one of the children of the elderly man confronted the hospital about continued medical treatment that was clearly contrary to the man’s wishes, the hospital social worker stated, "Well, he drifts in an out of consciousness."
It certainly is convenient for the hospital to convince the children of this man that everything was alright with the documents and that the children would best be able to help their father with the life sustaining/life ending options he discussed with his children, but in the end, the hospital chose to ignore valid documents regarding medical directives and instead choose to have the man sign off on medical procedures without the help of his family when the physician figured the man was in a period of consciousness/competency.
This left the family completely distraught regarding whether their father was going to die peacefully or whether he would be hooked up to life supports for some indeterminate time, or given medical procedures that were not fully explained to the man in terms of the actual quality of life that the he would have after the procedure - see the man did not, under any circumstance, want to hooked up to any machine, feeding tube, or breathing tube as the result of his medical condition.
The simple fact is the hospital took advantage of a family and sought at every step to pursue its own interests. The hospital pushed hard for the man to approve of medical procedures that would exceed $50,000.00 and his bill up to that time was probably nearly $300,000 to $400,000 dollars. Quite a heavy expense for a man who did not want to be placed on life supports and who only wanted to die peacefully and with dignity.
While we would all like to think that our doctor has our best interests at heart, you simply cannot trust this to be the case. Particularly when a hospital can attempt to argue that your documents are confusing, or are simply not the one's they are used to seeing. In truth, these professionals are used to seeing these documents in a variety of formats. But because the family could not present clearly drafted health care directives that pre-dated the hospital stay, the hospital was able to do whatever they wanted in terms of medical treatment, regardless of who thought what about it.
Websites like Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard's life planning site (http://www.azag.gov/life_care/index.html) do provide a tremendous resourse in that they give voice to a much needed topic of discussion; i.e., life planning and medical care directives prior to some emergency happening. However, any document that pertains to legal rights and responsibilities should be reviewed with an attorney. Simply put, an attorney who helps you plan your estate and medical directives will also be your best advocate for any further issue that might arise. Every individual is different and each of us has slightly different needs and wants when it comes to the end of our lives. You need an advocate who can help identify these differences and clearly state them for you. Generic forms are great to get started, but they simply cannot account for all our different needs. Your attorney can.
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