Why Florida Medical Directives Are Unique Among the 50 States?

Hello Mumbo Jumbo-ites!

Back again for your monthly infusion of legal wisdom...

Today the topic concerns your medical directives...

First things first, when we talk about your medical directives we are talking about a couple of different documents.  If you aren't aware of this simple fact, I recommend reviewing your documents and possibly consulting your favorite estate planning attorney, hint hint...

Anyhoo, your medical directive is comprised of a Living Will, which is essentially a "do not resuscitate" and this document was brought to the forefront of most of our lives for awhile during the Terry Schiavo case. 

The Living Will has been an area of concern for the Florida legislature since the Schiavo case for obvious reasons.  The fact is that Ms. Schiavo did not have a Living Will, but even if she had, the controversy would have raged on because the current FL legislation did not allow life support to be removed for someone in a persistent vegetative state, which was Ms. Schiavo's prognosis at that time. 

The Florida legislature has sinced amended the statutes so that life support may be removed where any 1 of 3 prognosis exists which are:  1.  Persistent vegetative state  2. Terminal conditions or 3.  Irreversible end stage condition.   You must review your living will to see if these prognosis are mentioned and to assure that you have initialled at least 1 of them...

Enough said on that.  Additionally, medical directives include what we call a Designation of Healthcare Surrogate which is basically an appointment of someone to make medical decisions for you in the event you cannot...you should have both of these documents as part of your Medical Directive and probably a general release of medical records for those closest to you.

The kicker and the big difference in the Sunshine State, which is Florida for you newbies, is that Florida is the only state in the USA that leglislatively requires medical directives to be updated every 24 months.  So if your documents were signed more than 24 months ago, it may be time to have them reviewed and newly executed to ensure the presumption of reliability.

I hope this information is helpful.

Until next time...

SJG