Advance Health Care Directives

It has happened to all of us. You make a visit to the doctor’s office and while checking in, the receptionist asks you to read and sign something about HIPAA. HIPAA? You came in for fever and a sore throat, your hip feels just fine, thank you very much. So what is the receptionist talking about? HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

This week, I was visiting with a client of mine who has been married more than once. The questions that this client had for me centered around whether there was anything that needed to be done in her estate planning after a divorce.

The fact is, there is a great deal that must be considered when a divorce takes place. Getting a divorce decree from the courts is only the beginning. Here are some things that should be dealt with as soon as possible after a divorce that can have a major impact on your estate planning:

1. You should carefully review your guardianship nominations for your minor children in your will or other legal documents and update them if necessary. This ensures that should something happen to you, your children will end up with the caregivers that you would prefer. Often, a divorce drastically changes your previous views on this issue.

2. Update your Health Care decision documents. In Utah, you should execute a new Advance Health Care Directive that helps you to designate whom you would want to make health care decisions for you if you were incapable of doing so. Often, these documents have not been changed after a divorce and in an emergency, and an ex-spouse is contacted about health care decisions by the doctors. This is exactly what happened in the case of Gary Coleman here in Utah. His ex-spouse was still named as the health care agent in his legal documents. Thus, she made decisions about his health care. And even though that may have been what Mr. Coleman would have wanted, it is still unclear if that was the case.

A few days ago, my wife and I learned that a friend we went to college with is in need of a heart transplant. As any of us would be, this woman is overwhelmed at the thought of facing her own death. Unfortunately, we can be faced with end-of-life health care decisions at any age. This is why every adult should give some thought to planning for those decisions and then take the simple step of executing an advance health care directive.

This week, Governor Herbert will sign SCR2, a concurrent resolution encouraging every adult in Utah, whether they have a known serious medical condition or not, to consider preparing an advance health care directive (AHCD). The Utah AHCD form has two parts: (1) Part I allows you to appoint someone (an agent) to make medical decisions for you when you cannot make or communicate your own medical decisions (also called a Health Care or Medical Power of Attorney). (2) Part II allows you to express your preferences about health care decisions under particular circumstances and helps ensure your health care wishes will be honored (also called a Living Will).

It's true. I did have lunch with Gov. Herbert today. It's also true that about 50 other people had lunch with him. He spoke today at the Lehi Area Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon on the economic development of Utah. I've been a member of the Chamber for about a year now and I am very excited about the growth that is coming to the State of Utah, and specifically, the growth that is coming to North Utah County. Gov. Herbert recited a litany of encouraging statistics and rankings all supporting the idea that Utah is truly one of the most economically promising states in the nation.

 I'm probably more attuned to this sort of thing than most people as a result of my profession, but last week a family here in Utah suffered a devastating blow when the mother of three boys was killed in a snowstorm car accident.

Unfortunately, those three boys had lost their father to cancer just a few months earlier. When the father died, the mother was left alone to care for her three boys (12, 14, and 16 years old) and undoubtedly was doing the best she could under the circumstances. In fact, the reason she was out in the snowstorm over Thanksgiving weekend was to provide for her family as an in-home health care nurse.

While the extended family of these three boys will be pulling together to do what they can to help, there exists quite a bit of uncertainty as to where the boys will go, and how the family will be able to help support the extra expense that will undoubtedly come as a result of taking these boys in.