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Uniform Laws

General Advance Health Care Directive

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About This Template

A Health Care Directive is an indispensable part of comprehensive estate planning, granting clarity in medical crises. This template provides a foundational document for designating a health care agent and stating end-of-life treatment preferences. This is a critical efficiency tool, allowing firms to quickly draft a core document that ensures clients' medical wishes are legally documented and enforceable, while alleviating the burden of difficult decision-making from family members during a medical emergency.

Advance Health Care Directive

Jurisdiction Notes

Health Care Directives are highly jurisdictional. Most states have specific statutes governing the required format, language, and execution formalities (e.g., witness requirements, necessity of a notary) for this document to be valid. This general template is NOT suitable for use without verification against the specific state's advance directive statutes (e.g., state-mandated forms, specific warning language). Attorneys must customize it to ensure compliance with the execution laws of the state where the client resides or where the form is most likely to be invoked.

What is this template?

This is an advance directive that allows an individual (the Principal) to appoint a specific person (the Agent or proxy) to make health care decisions on their behalf if they become incapacitated. The general Health Care Directive template typically combines the designation of an agent with a statement of the Principal's wishes regarding life-sustaining treatments (a Living Will component). It covers a range of medical situations and is designed to provide clear direction to medical professionals

How to Customize

With Clio Draft

If this template is available in your region, you can activate it in your Clio Draft account. It will then be pre-filled with information from your contacts and matters, helping you save time.

  1. Click Request Template, and complete the Request Information form.
  2. Open the activation email to activate the template in Clio Draft.
  3. In Clio Draft, go to Library and select the Court forms subtab.
  4. Select a category to view all the court forms associated with that category.
  5. Find the form that you need. You can use the search bar to search by form number or form title.
  6. Click the Actions dropdown and then select Create form template.
  7. At this stage, you can configure any fields on the template that will remain consistent across multiple matters and specific practice areas.
    • Purple fields: These fields are highlighted in purple because they are connected to linked fields that will automatically insert information entered on the Populate page. If you fill in a purple field, the data in that field will always populate when you draft a document from this form template and will not be overwritten by text entered on the populate page.
    • Blue fields: These fields are highlighted in blue because they are unique to a specific matter. You will enter this information after you generate the form template, on the Populate page.

For detailed instructions for drafting form templates and more information about Clio Draft, see Clio Draft: Form Templates and Clio Draft: Draft and Manage Documents.