Advance Health Care Directives -- Living Wills

Advance Directives -- Living Wills

Very few questions are more important than questions about decisions about our own health care. It is important to know what our rights are, and how we can be sure that health care decisions are made the way we want. Maryland has very detailed laws about health care decisions - what we have the right to decide, and how we can be sure our wishes are carried out even if we are too ill to continue making decisions. Written instructions about what health we want or do not want if we are not able to make the decisions are often called a "Living Will." In Maryland the law calls it an "Advance Directive." The two terms mean the same thing.

General Information about Living Wills and Advance Directives

The American Bar Association's website has general information on living wills, powers of attorney, and other disability issues. The information may not be applicable in every state, but it would be helpful to anyone who wants an overview of medical advanced directives. A non-profit organization called Partnership For Caring: America's Choices For The Dying focuses on the emotional and legal issues for people nearing life's end and for their loved ones.

Maryland Law - Health Care Decisions and Advance Directives

The law in Maryland includes much more than just a written living will. A good place to start is the web site of the Attorney General Of Maryland. A section called Health Policy Development includes Advance Directive forms, with instructions, a summary of the Maryland law and the full text of the law, a "decision tree" to help doctors, a policy discussion of Alzheimer's Disease Care, Legal opinions of specific questions on interpreting the Maryland law, and information of the law about human medical research.

Maryland law allows written or oral Advance Directives (Living Wills), and it provides rules for how end of life health care decisions are made if there is no living will. The questions below can help you understand the Maryland law.

You can read an explanation of Maryland's Health Care Decisions Act online or download an Adobe PDF file of it from the Maryland Department of aging. It includes a sample statement that a friend or relative can give to the patient's doctor if they are not on the list of surrogates in the Law.

You can download sample forms, with instructions, for an advance directive or living will from the Attorney General of Maryland's website. (The form and instructions are an Adobe PDF file)

This site offers legal information, not legal advice. We make every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information and to clearly explain your options. However we do not provide legal advice - the application of the law to your individual circumstances. For legal advice, you should consult an attorney. See our section on "Finding A Lawyer In Maryland." The Maryland State Law Library, a court-related agency of the Maryland Judiciary, sponsors this site. The website was developed (1999-2007) as part of an access to justice initiative by the Maryland Legal Assistance Network (MLAN) in collaboration with a number of legal services providers serving low and moderate income Marylanders.

This Page is copyrighted Legal Aid Bureau, Inc., 2001-2005. All rights reserved, subject to the following exception: You are free to copy the information for your own use or for other non-commercial purposes with the following language “Source: People’s Law Library of Maryland – www.peoples-law.org, © Legal Aid Bureau, Inc, 2001- 2005."