A living will is a legal document known as an advance directive that gives instructions to health professionals. It lets them know under which circumstances you would like to be kept alive and which circumstances you would not. If you are interested in creating a living will, follow these guidelines.
- There are two main ways to create a living will. You can either have a legal professional create one for you or you can do it yourself.
- If you have a legal professional do the living will for you, hire one that specializes in this type of law in your state. If the living will is for an elderly person, find a lawyer who specializes in elder law.
- If you are going to do it yourself, the first thing to do is find out the laws for living wills in the state where you live. This can be done by doing an Internet search with the words "living will" followed by the name of your state. For example, if you were searching in the state of New Jersey, you would use a search engine to search for "living will New Jersey."
Your search will uncover many sites. Look to see if the state's website is in the list. That would be the best place to start.
- Read all the site has to say about living wills before beginning to fill out the living will forms. The state site should have downloadable forms specific to that state and instructions.
- Another way to do it yourself is to use a website like Legal Zoom. At these websites, you fill out a questionnaire and then the site prepares your document for you. When it is finished, you can look it over, and decide whether to purchase the document or not. This is a simple way to "do it yourself." It costs more than doing all the paperwork yourself, but takes a lot of the guesswork out of it.
Even if you create your living will this way, it is still a good idea to research the laws for your state yourself before doing so.
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Author: Robin Shreeves