Health Care Directives Attorney in Connecticut

An accident, stroke, or sudden illness can leave you unable to speak for yourself — often without warning. When that happens, someone has to decide: whether to continue treatment, whether to withdraw life support, whether to consent to a procedure, whether to move you from one care setting to another.

If you haven't documented your wishes in advance, those decisions fall to your family, your doctors, and ultimately Connecticut's default rules — which may not reflect what you would have chosen, and which can create painful conflicts between people who love you but disagree about what to do.

Connecticut's Advance Directive for Health Care is the document that puts those decisions in your hands. I help Connecticut families prepare advance directives as part of a complete estate plan. Call (860) 560-8382 or complete the contact form to schedule a consultation.

What Connecticut's Advance Directive Actually Is

Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-570 et seq., Connecticut recognizes an integrated document — the Advance Directive for Health Care — that typically combines several related instruments:

• A living will — your written statement about life-sustaining treatment if you have a terminal condition or are permanently unconscious
• An appointment of health care representative — designating the person authorized to make medical decisions for you when you cannot
• A designation of conservator of the person for future incapacity — naming who you would want appointed if the Probate Court ever needs to appoint a conservator
• A document of anatomical gift — your wishes regarding organ and tissue donation

Many Connecticut attorneys — including me — draft these as a single integrated document so that everything is coordinated and there are no conflicts between your wishes and the authority of the people empowered to carry them out.

Why a Living Will Alone Is Not Enough

A living will states your wishes. It does not name someone to enforce those wishes or to make real-time medical decisions as situations evolve.

Consider: a living will might say "I do not want life support if I am permanently unconscious." But a real-world medical situation is rarely that clean. Doctors may need to decide whether to perform a specific surgery, whether to try a new medication, whether to move you to a different facility, whether a trial of treatment should continue or be withdrawn. These decisions require a human being with legal authority — not a static document.

That's why your advance directive should do both:

1. State your wishes about life-sustaining treatment (the living will component), and
2. Appoint a Health Care Representative — a trusted person authorized to make health care decisions for you when you cannot

Without a named Health Care Representative, even a carefully drafted living will may leave your family scrambling, with doctors forced to rely on Connecticut's default next-of-kin hierarchy under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-570 — which can produce conflicts when, for example, adult children disagree or a non-family partner has no legal standing.

Choosing Your Health Care Representative

Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-576, any Connecticut adult can appoint a health care representative. The person you choose should be:

• At least 18 years old
• Willing to serve (have the conversation before naming them)
• Familiar with your values and comfortable advocating for them, even under pressure from hospital staff or family members
• Geographically accessible when possible — able to get to the hospital or on a call quickly
• Emotionally capable of making hard decisions in a crisis

A few important Connecticut rules:

• The person you appoint as your health care representative cannot also serve as a witness to the document
• You should name an alternate in case your first choice is unavailable
• Your representative's authority is triggered only when your attending physician (or advanced practice registered nurse) determines you are unable to understand and communicate health care decisions — not before

Choosing this person is often harder than clients expect. I'll walk you through the considerations, including common situations like spouses with differing values, adult children who may disagree, blended families, and unmarried partners who will have no legal standing without the appointment.

Life-Sustaining Treatment — What Your Living Will Can Address

A Connecticut living will can address your wishes regarding specific categories of life-sustaining treatment, including:

• Artificial respiration / mechanical ventilation — breathing machines
• Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) — restoring heart function
• Artificial nutrition and hydration — feeding tubes, IV fluids
• Dialysis — kidney function support
• Antibiotics and other treatments for serious infections
• Palliative care — comfort and pain management (typically continued regardless of other withdrawal decisions)

The Connecticut statutory form under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-575a addresses these within two defined medical conditions:

• Terminal condition — an incurable or irreversible condition that, without life support, will result in death within a relatively short time
• Permanently unconscious — a permanent coma or persistent vegetative state

You can be more or less specific than the statutory form allows — your advance directive can include personalized instructions, particular religious or ethical commitments, or guidance for situations the form doesn't contemplate.

One Connecticut-specific nuance worth noting: under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-574, a pregnant patient's living will may be subject to different rules regarding continuation of life support to allow the fetus to reach a live birth. If you are of childbearing age, this is a meaningful conversation to have when drafting.

Execution Requirements in Connecticut

Under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-575a, a Connecticut advance directive must be:

• In writing
• Signed and dated by the declarant (the person making the directive)
• Witnessed by two adult witnesses, each of whom must also sign

Connecticut places specific restrictions on who can witness the document. The witnesses generally cannot:

• Be the person appointed as health care representative
• Be the attending physician or APRN (or their employees)
• Be employees of the health care facility where the declarant is a patient
• Have a claim against the declarant's estate

Notarization is not required for validity in Connecticut — but many attorneys (including me) notarize advance directives anyway, because notarization can help with acceptance by out-of-state providers or institutions.

DNR Orders and MOLST Are Different — and Important

One area where I often see client confusion: a living will and a DNR order are not the same thing.

• A living will is an advance statement of your wishes — a legal document you sign while you have capacity, to speak for you later if you lose it.
• A DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) order is an active medical order signed by a physician, directing that resuscitation not be attempted. DNR orders in Connecticut are governed by Connecticut Department of Public Health protocols.
• A MOLST form — Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment — is Connecticut's portable medical order framework for people with serious advancing illness. Under Conn. Gen. Stat. Chapter 368w, a MOLST form is a physician's order that travels with the patient across care settings (home, hospital, nursing facility) and is honored by EMS.

A living will tells your future doctors what you want. A DNR or MOLST order tells EMS and medical staff right now what to do. If you have a serious illness, both may be appropriate — and I'll tell you when to work with your physician on a MOLST in addition to your advance directive.

What Happens If You Don't Have an Advance Directive

If you become incapacitated without a Connecticut advance directive in place, several things happen:

1. No one automatically has legal authority to make medical decisions for you. Hospitals typically look to a statutory next-of-kin hierarchy, but that hierarchy is not always clean — disputes among family members, absent family members, or non-family caregivers can create real problems.
2. Your medical team may be required to provide more aggressive care than you would have wanted, because no one has authority to direct otherwise.
3. Your family may need to petition the Probate Court for conservatorship — a court process that takes time, costs money, and involves public records, just to get legal authority over decisions you could have delegated yourself with a signed piece of paper.
4. Unmarried partners have no legal standing in Connecticut's default rules. If you are in a long-term unmarried relationship, your partner has no authority to make decisions for you unless you have designated them in writing.

These outcomes are entirely avoidable with a properly executed advance directive.

How Advance Directives Fit With Your Broader Estate Plan

A complete Connecticut estate plan typically includes:

• Your will (what happens to your property when you pass away)
• A durable power of attorney for financial matters (separate from health care — governs your money and property if you're incapacitated)
• A health care representative designation and living will (this document — governs medical decisions)
• A HIPAA authorization (so your representatives can access your medical records)

Each addresses a different situation. A will doesn't help you during incapacity. A financial power of attorney doesn't govern medical decisions. A living will without a health care representative designation leaves your family without someone empowered to act. They work together, and they're drafted together — which is why most of my clients handle all of these in a single estate planning engagement.

When to Create or Update Your Advance Directive

The honest answer: now, while you are healthy and clear-headed. The whole point of the document is that it must be signed before you lose capacity — once capacity is in question, creating a new advance directive becomes significantly more complicated.

Specific life events that should prompt you to create or review one include:

• Becoming a young adult (18 — hospitals no longer default to parental decision-making)
• Marriage, divorce, or the death of a spouse
• Birth of a child or grandchild
• Receiving a significant medical diagnosis
• A move to or from Connecticut
• A change in your chosen health care representative's availability, health, or relationship to you
• Evolving wishes about end-of-life care

Connecticut law also contains specific rules — under Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-579b — that a divorce generally revokes the appointment of a spouse as health care representative, but this is an area where explicit updating is better than relying on statutory revocation.

Schedule a Consultation

If you don't have a Connecticut advance directive, or if yours hasn't been updated in years, let's talk. Call (860) 560-8382 or complete the contact form to schedule a consultation.

Law Office of Aakash Sharma, LLC 750 Main Street, Suite 100 Hartford, CT 06103 (860) 560-8382 [email protected]

Aakash Sharma is admitted to practice in Connecticut. This page is attorney advertising. The information provided is for general informational purposes only and is not legal advice. Submitting a contact form does not create an attorney-client relationship.