Plan Now or Forever Hold Your Peace

By Robert S. Meyring*, Attorney at Law

Even though one may think "there is always time to plan...," the truth is: There is not.

Currently there are two cases dealing with life support issues capturing national attention. The first situation involves a 13-year-old girl, Jahi McMath, who suffered complications after tonsil surgery. Jahi is connected to a ventilator and is "brain dead" according to the Oakland, California Children's hospital where she is a patient. A second case involves a Fort Worth, Texas wife, Marlise Munoz, age 33, who is 18 weeks pregnant and also brain-dead. 

Jahi's parents want life-support to be continued even though a California court told the hospital it could turn off the ventilator. Marlise's husband wants to terminate her life support (and resultantly the pregnancy) even though Texas law says that he cannot terminate her life support if it would also terminate her pregnancy. If you look into the details of either case, you'll find that the legal issues are very complicated and there are almost no "right" and "wrong" answers - even though there is no shortage of people and interest groups who will assert their version of the "correct" course of action. Presently, we do not know how either case will end, but we can be pretty sure it will not be good.

The reality is that any person has a greater than 50% chance of experiencing a time of incapacity before the end of life. The advance directive for health care is a good estate planning document that addresses incapacity situations and allows people to state their intentions about how they want life-sustaining treatment to be provided. Financially, it makes sense because it allows someone else to make health care decisions without the family having to go through an expensive and long legal process of guardianship. If the advance directive is established, then chances of family fighting about medical treatment are minimized. The document makes the best of an unexpected and sometimes inevitable situation.

The health care directives document addresses the heart-wrenching life support decisions that families sometimes need to make on behalf of a child, spouse or parent. When these health care preferences or "directives" are not written, as seen in the cases below, decisions are left to the surviving family to navigate where the rules are anything but clear.

The health care advance directives is one of several documents in a complete estate plan which usually includes a will or a trust. With proper planning, one's intentions can be clearly stated, conflicts can be avoided, and you can exert control over your incapacity and your estate. Planning is making the best out of the inevitable. The hardest part for most individuals in establishing an advance directive for health care is often making the call to an attorney to help. The time to plan is now.

*Robert S. Meyring, of Meyring Law Firm offers complimentary phone consultations at 678-217-4369. The Meyring Law Firm is located 200 feet east of the railroad crossing on Paces Ferry Road, Atlanta. More information at www.MeyringFirm.com.