Your voice in the room, when you can’t speak.

Two documents, often signed together

A power of attorney for health-care decisions

This names a person, your agent, to make medical decisions for you when you cannot make them yourself. They talk to the doctors, see the records, consent to or refuse treatment, and choose where you are cared for, guided by what you told them you would want. You can name a second person in case the first cannot serve.

A declaration

Most people call this a living will. It speaks to one situation: what you want done about life-sustaining treatment if your condition is terminal and you cannot speak for yourself. It is your own instruction, in your own words, so the person you named is carrying out your decision rather than making one alone.

“Advance directive” is the umbrella term for both. Most plans include both, along with a HIPAA authorization that lets doctors and hospitals share information with the people you list. Without it, a hospital may not be able to tell your family anything.

What happens without one

For decisions about life-sustaining treatment, Nevada law sets an order of family members who may be asked to decide, beginning with a spouse and then adult children. Where the law is silent, or where the family does not agree, the route is a court guardianship: a petition, medical evidence, a public file, and a judge choosing who decides. What is hardest on a family is having to guess, and finding that each of them guessed differently.

Parents are often surprised by the other version of this. Once a child turns eighteen, a parent has no automatic right to their medical information or to make decisions for them. A young adult leaving for college or work needs a health-care power of attorney and a HIPAA authorization as much as their grandparents do.

Nevada-specific detail

The statutory forms

Nevada’s statutes set out a form for the power of attorney for health-care decisions and a form for the declaration. Documents on those forms are the ones Nevada hospitals and care facilities recognize on sight.

Signing

A Nevada health-care power of attorney is signed before a notary or before two witnesses, and the statute restricts who may act as a witness: not the person you are naming, and not your health-care provider. A declaration is signed before two witnesses.

The Lockbox

Nevada’s Secretary of State keeps a registry, the Living Will Lockbox, where an advance directive can be filed so that a hospital can retrieve it when the paper copy is in a drawer at home.

What an attorney does not prepare

A POLST, the Provider Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment, and a do-not-resuscitate order are medical orders. They are made with your doctor, usually during a serious illness, and they travel with you through the medical system. They work alongside a directive; they do not replace it, and a directive does not replace them.

Psychiatric care

Nevada provides a separate form for an advance directive about psychiatric care, for a person who wants to set out in advance how they would want a mental-health crisis handled.

Directives from another state

A directive that was valid where it was signed is generally honored in Nevada. The practical problem is the same as with a financial power of attorney: an unfamiliar form slows people down at the worst moment. After a move, these are among the first documents to replace.

Choosing the person

The person you name does not need to be the oldest child or the one who lives closest. They need to be able to hear hard news, ask direct questions, and say what you would have said, even when other people in the room want something different. Then they need to be told. Give them a copy, and tell them what you would want.