Nichole Y. Shafer
Guest Columnist
Recently I was talking with some college students who asked if they needed to have a living will. These students thought that since they were “young,” a living will would be pointless for them.
While I wish I could say that a living will and other advance directives are only needed for “older adults,” that is not the case, and advance directives are not just for older adults. This is because unexpected end-of-life situations can happen at any age, so it’s important for all adults to prepare these documents in advance of needing them.
Advance directives guide choices for your doctors and your agents if you’re terminally ill, seriously injured, in a coma, in the late stages of dementia or near the end of life.
More specifically, since these college students were inquiring about a living will, let’s look at living wills. A living will instructs the doctor to remove the IV for nutrition and hydration if the patient is permanently unconscious and if the nutrition and hydration IV (not the pain medicine IV) will not provide comfort or relieve pain.
Ohio law does not put an age on who should have a living will (as long as you are an adult). But Ohio law does state that a living will shall be signed at the end of the document by the declarant or by another individual at the direction of the declarant.
Another requirement for a living will is that it must state the date of its execution, and a living will must be properly executed to be valid.
To properly execute a living will, the declarant must sign the living will document in front of two witnesses or a notary. The witnesses of the living will shall be adults who are not related to the declarant. Further, the witnesses under Ohio law are not allowed to be the attending physician of the declarant or the administrator of any nursing home in which the declarant is receiving care.
The main section of a living will that parties need to include is a statement that the declarant’s attending physician may withhold or withdraw nutrition and hydration if the declarant is in a permanently unconscious state as determined by two physicians (the “statutory language”). These two physicians shall use a reasonable degree of medical certainty (in accordance with reasonable medical standards) and must believe that nutrition or hydration will no longer serve to provide comfort to the declarant.
Further, Ohio law states that the statutory language of a living will must be differentiable from the rest of the text of the document, which means the statutory language could be in capital letters, a different font, bigger type or boldface type. And Ohio law states that the declarant must place the declarant’s initials, signature, or mark, underneath or adjacent to the statutory language.
Therefore, as long as you are a legal adult, you cannot be too “young” for a living will, due to the risk of a serious injury, illness or other life-ending casualties.
Nichole Y. Shafer is an Ohio-licensed attorney at Schroeder Law LTD in Putnam County. She limits her practice to business, real estate, estate planning and agriculture issues in northwest Ohio. She can be reached at [email protected] or at 419-659-2058. This article is not intended to serve as legal advice, and specific advice should be sought from the licensed attorney of your choice based upon the specific facts and circumstances that you face.
