What Is the Significance of a Healthcare Proxy?

You may have a clear preference about how you wish your healthcare to be handled, especially your end-of-life care, which you may have explicitly expressed to your loved ones already. However, it may be one thing to vocalize these preferences and another to write them down in a legally binding document. Thus, a healthcare proxy comes into play. Without further ado, please continue reading to learn the significance of a healthcare proxy in your estate plan and how one of the experienced Butler County powers of attorney lawyers at Heritage Elder Law & Estate Planning, LLC, can help you add, modify, or replace one if necessary.

What is the significance of a healthcare proxy in my estate plan?

Simply put, a healthcare proxy is a legal document that authorizes a third-party individual to make medical decisions on your behalf. This document becomes effective in the unlikely yet unfortunate event that you cannot communicate these decisions yourself, should you lose your ability to speak or otherwise no longer have a sound mental capacity. That said, the third-party individual charged with this responsibility is typically referred to as your healthcare agent.

How do I change a healthcare proxy in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania?

You may have thought long and hard about the medical preferences you wanted to express in your healthcare proxy. Similarly, you may have deeply reflected on the right individual to be appointed as your healthcare agent. However, as time goes on, circumstances change, and your mindset shifts, you may realize that this legal document no longer aligns with your plans. And with that, you must take measures to change it effectively immediately.

This may require you to write out an entirely new healthcare proxy. It is best practice to destroy the original and all physical copies of the original legal document soon afterward. Also, you should notify your healthcare providers, close family members, and old or new healthcare agent(s) about this change directly. This is all to avoid confusion and a potential misstep from your medical preferences at a time when you can no longer speak up for yourself.

Lastly, when enforcing a new healthcare proxy, you must follow the same steps as your original one. That is, you must sign and date it in front of two witnesses, who must also provide their signatures at the time. Importantly, your two witnesses cannot be your healthcare proxy’s healthcare agent and successor agent. This may become a conflict of interest, with the potential of having your family members step in and accuse them of negatively influencing or coercing you into creating and signing this new document.

Before this gets too much, please seek the guidance and counsel of one of the skilled Butler County estate planning & probate attorneys from Heritage Elder Law & Estate Planning, LLC. We will work to the best of our ability to minimize or eliminate this mess from your immediate worry.