PART VII. STATE FORMS, SUPPORTIVE STATEMENTS, & APPENDICES
A. Integrating Your Advance Directive into Standard
Formats.
Most of the states of the United States have
'living will' laws
with forms for making your Advance Directive valid in that state.
Many other countries also provide standard formats for 'living wills'.
Luckily, all such forms allow you to extend your comments,
which you will do if you create a comprehensive Advance Directive.
'Living will' laws (and the standard forms
they require or suggest)
were usually produced by political compromise.
And sometimes the laws show marks of one moral point of view.
For example, some states require a higher level of proof
for the withdrawal and/or withholding of food and water.
Such problems—created by the standard forms themselves—
prevent some people from completing their 'living wills'.
This book suggests not starting with
government forms.
Rather, begin with the Questions asked by this book.
And after you have written at least one sentence
in answer to each Question you find relevant,
you can look at the standard form to see where that view might fit.
And if you want your Advance Directive to be
valid
in more than one jurisdiction, you should fulfill all of requirements
of each jurisdiction in this section of your 'living will'.
The easiest way to do this might be to fill in the blanks
in the form provided by each government with the Answer numbers
(or other references to the contents) from your Advance Directive.
It is not necessary to write everything over again for each
jurisdiction.
Simply create a different appendix for each standard form you use.