According to Illinois law, any individual 18 years of age or more may execute a health care directive - living will declaration - governing the withholding of life-sustaining treatment
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Illinois health care directive is designed to help you communicate your wishes about medical treatment at some time in the future when you are unable to make your wishes known because of illness or injury |
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This is an important legal document known as an Advance Directive. The Illinois health care directive is designed to help you communicate your wishes about medical treatment at some time in the future when you are unable to make your wishes known because of illness or injury. These wishes are usually based on personal values. In particular, you may want to consider what burdens or hardships of treatment you would be willing to accept for a particular amount of benefit obtained if you were seriously ill.
Before signing health care directive you need to discuss you treatment with your physician in as many details as possible, and consider types of treatments that you want/do not want to be performed for you when you are unable to express your wishes because of your illness. Please make sure to state clearly particular treatments you want or do not want. A living will, unlike a health care power of attorney, only applies if you have a terminal condition. A terminal condition means an incurable and irreversible condition when death is imminent and the application of any death delaying procedures serves only to prolong the dying process. Even if you sign a living will, food and water cannot be withdrawn if it would be the only cause of death. Also, if you are pregnant and your health-care professional thinks you could have a live birth, your living will cannot go into effect. You can use a standard living will form or write your own. You may write specific directions about the death-delaying procedures you do or do not want. The Illinois health care directive may not be changed or modified. If you want to make changes in the document, you must make an entirely new one. It is your responsibility to tell your health-care professional if you have a living will. You can cancel your living will at any time, either by telling someone or by canceling it in writing. THIS HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVE IS NOT VALID UNLESS IT IS SIGNED IN THE PRESENCE OF TWO COMPETENT ADULT WITNESSES. THE FOLLOWING PERSONS MAY NOT ACT AS ONE OF THE WITNESSES: (1) the person designated by the Principal as your agent; (2) a person related to the Principal by blood or marriage; (3) a person entitled to any part of the Principal’s estate after the Principal’s death under a will or codicil executed by the Principal or by operation of law; (4) the Principal’s attending physician; (5) an employee of the Principal’s attending physician; (6) an employee of a health care facility in which the Principal is a patient if the employee is providing direct patient care to the Principal or is an officer, director, partner, or business office employee of the health care facility or of any parent organization of the health care facility; or (7) a person who, at the time this power of attorney is executed, has a claim against any part of the Principal’s estate after his or her death. A health care provider who makes good faith health care decisions based on the provisions of an apparently genuine living will is immune from criminal and civil liability for those decisions If you have both a health care power of attorney and a living will, the agent you name in your power of attorney will make your health-care decisions unless he or she is unavailable. |
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