Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in Kentucky

The better question is: Will the living will be honored?

A living will, another name for an advanced medical directive, describes what actions should be taken for a person's health in the event that individual cannot make those decisions for himself or herself, and normally the document also appoints another individual, and perhaps even an alternate or two, to make such decisions on his or her behalf.

What happens in many instances is that an individual has signed a living will asking to be a "DNR," or Do Not Resuscitate, or refuse certain types of life-saving measures, but the individual who is either next of kin or the medical proxy wants to go against that order and asks the medical staff to do everything possible to keep the individual alive. The reality is that hospitals will likely err on the side of caution and abide by the next of kin's decision to treat rather than not treat. Perhaps the logic is that if the patient by some miracle actually lives, the patient (probably) isn't going to later sue the hospital for saving his life! Certainly not if he lives but remains in a permanent vegetative state.

However, as most famously occurred in the Terri Shiavo case, a woman who had been kept alive by a feeding tube while in a permanent vegetative state (while her husband and parents engaged in a lengthy and highly-publicized legal battle that extended into national politics), families with differing opinions on medical treatment (or more specifically, when to stop medical treatment) often end up in court. A living will probably would not have stopped that situation from ending up in court, or perhaps even from becoming a national debacle, but rather it would have been one more piece of evidence in the case that indicated what the patient's wishes would actually have been.

If you are seeking to overturn an advanced medical directive now of someone who is still capable of making his or her own decisions, you won't have much luck with that, because advanced medical directives only come into effect when the individual can no longer make decisions on his or her own behalf. If you want to know if it can be overturned by a court in the instance it comes into effect, however, then certainly it can. The specific circumstances will dictate the success of such a venture. If you are concerned that your own living will might be overturned, it is always important to discuss your wishes with your family/next of kin/medical proxy as well as have an advanced medical directive on record with your treating physicians so that your wishes are made known. If everyone's on the same page, and understand what their family members want, there naturally tends to be less conflict.

For more detailed information on living wills, and the forms you need to properly execute one, visit Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway's website at:

http://ag.ky.gov/civil/consumerprotection/livingwills.htm