APRIL 21, 2014 VOLUME 21 NUMBER 15
It is late April, and that means Spring is in full bloom in Tucson. Many of our winter visitors (we call them “snowbirds” but not mockingly or disparagingly — at least most of the time) will be returning to Illinois, Missouri, New York, Wisconsin, or other, cooler climes. For that matter, many of our long-time residents and even natives will soon decamp to seashore or mountain, waiting for the heat to ease up.
This annual migration gives us a chance to talk about something we get asked a lot. Surely you need to have signed a health care power of attorney and living will. But do you need to have signed one in each state where you live part time? For that matter, should you sign a state-specific form for every state you visit more than fleetingly? And what about foreign countries — will your Arizona advance directive be valid in Canada, or Mexico, or Europe?
Generally speaking, there is less state-to-state law variation than you might suppose. Your Missouri will is going to be fine in Arizona (though if you’ve moved here from Missouri maybe your circumstances have changed — let us review and update your will. But that’s a different issue.) Your California living trust probably needs very little change for your new Arizona residence. But one area where there is a lot of variation is in advance health care directives.
What’s different? Terminology, for one thing. In Michigan they talk about health care “patient advocates,” and in New York they favor “health care proxies”. In both states they’ll probably figure out what you mean by “health care agent” or “health care power of attorney,” but you’d rather not make the hospital or doctor call the legal staff for an opinion. You’d rather just get good care, and quickly.
Another difference: some states permit broad powers in advance directives, and other states tend to be restrictive. Arizona is in the former camp. As many as half of the states would limit the applicability of your health care power of attorney to circumstances in which you are in a coma or persistent vegetative state; Arizona does not have that limitation, and so your Arizona form is unlikely to include that language. Furthermore, you probably wouldn’t want that restriction in your Arizona document while you’re here — why include a restriction that is not required and might cast doubt on the applicability of your advance directive, after all?
For many of our clients, the choice of agent is partly controlled by who is local and convenient. If you spend your winters near your daughter in Arizona, it might make sense to name her as your health care agent. If you return to Illinois, where your son lives, for the summer, you might want to name him as your agent while there.
There is a growing movement across the country — but not in Arizona — for something called “POLST” (some states use similar-but-different acronyms). That stands for “Physician’s Orders on Life-Sustaining Treatment,” and it is a very interesting and useful form by which you can have a “Do Not Resuscitate” (DNR) order in place before you go to the hospital or nursing home. Arizona has something similar, which is usually referred to as the “orange form” — but Arizona’s form will not work in any other state and no other state’s POLST form will work in Arizona. If you are concerned about resuscitation, you need to have appropriate plans in place in other states where you live part time or visit extensively.
So does all that mean you should have a new health care power of attorney drawn up as you drive across the border into New Mexico, Colorado and each state you go through? Not necessarily.
There’s at least one problem with having multiple forms signed. Under Arizona law, and the law of most states, when there are multiple documents that are internally inconsistent the most recent one is treated as revoking the earlier one. In other words, if you sign a new health care power of attorney as you arrive in Wisconsin this summer, you may have revoked your existing health care power of attorney. When you come back next fall, you’ll need to sign another one. The cycle can be endless, and the year that someone actually needs to make decisions for you will be the year you overlooked the update.
As for travel outside the country — that’s a lot harder to generalize about. In many countries the very concept of advance directives is foreign (that pun was completely intentional). Best advice: look up the country you’re visiting and see what you can find out, and take a copy of your advance directives with you just in case they’ll be helpful.
What should you do about domestic travel? Here are a few thoughts for the itinerant or part-time Arizonan:
- Plan for your travel when you first sign your power of attorney. Do you want your daughter to make your health care decisions while you’re here, and your son in Illinois? Tell us and we can draft for that. Do you spend lots of time every year in Virginia? Let us know and we can double-check whether Virginia is particularly problematic (we have — it’s not).
- Make sure that you’ve talked with family members about your wishes. Those making decisions for you need to know what you would want. Those NOT making decisions for you particularly need to know — we’ve had lots of cases where the distant family member said, more or less, “Mom NEVER would have said that if she’d been in her right mind.” Tell everyone what you want while you’re clearly still in your right mind, and that will reduce the possibility for conflicts based on where you are, what your documents say (or don’t say) and whose form you used.
- In addition to your advance directives, you might want to write some thoughts about end-of-life treatment. The best ones are in your own words, but there are others out there — like the well-known “Five Wishes” document, which you can create, review and pay for online. We would rather you didn’t sign this form, though — we don’t want you revoking your valid Arizona advance directive unintentionally. Customize it, print it out, and bring it with you when you visit us — we can talk through it and adopt those portions you like. Note that even the people who promote Five Wishes identify 8 states where the document does not meet requirements of state law.
If you do travel a lot, or have homes in more than one state, you probably are not a good candidate for a pre-printed advance directive form. If you signed your will (and maybe your living trust), and then filled out a form at the hospital, doctor’s office, church seminar or public forum, we need to see you again — you probably have inadvertently revoked the power of attorney we prepared for you when you first came in. If you haven’t yet gotten around to doing anything about this, get moving. First download the Five Wishes document (see above), or the Arizona health care directive forms, and then make an appointment. Let’s get this done.
(Note: don’t live in Tucson? OK — do everything we say here, but then make your appointment with a local lawyer who knows about this stuff.)
(Further Note: we haven’t said anything here about financial powers of attorney. There is also state-to-state variation in those forms, but the subject is quite a bit more complicated. We’ll take that up in another newsletter one day — when we have more courage and time.)
One Response
Hi – I’m a NJ and NY attorney and I regularly read your newsletter. I like the way you get the information across. In connection with the recent Living Will article, I am often asked about having a Living Will with you. I thought you should know about DocuBank (www.docubank.com). I provide it to my clients for one year at my expense. DocuBank gives the client a wallet card through which a hospital can access the client’s Living Will 24/7. It solves the problem of not taking your Living Will with you when you travel!
I hope this helps.
Jim