Charlotte Advanced Health Care Directive Attorney

Charlotte Advanced Health Care Directive Lawyer

When it comes to estate planning, wills and trusts receive considerable attention, but another key estate planning tool that can prove extremely valuable to many individuals is advanced health care directives. In order to draft and implement these important legal instruments, the advice of a trusted Charlotte advanced health care directive attorney may prove indispensable.

Orsbon & Fenninger, LLP: Experienced Health Care Directive Attorneys

At Orsbon & Fenninger, LLP, of Charlotte, our team of highly skilled attorneys, including R. Anthony “Tony” Orsbon, Cynthia “Cyndy” T. Fenninger, and Perry A. Coumas, brings over half a century of combined estate planning and law experience to the table, underpinning our firm’s ability to cater to the unique needs of individuals and families in the face of a wide range of complex and sensitive financial, legal, and health care situations.

At Orsbon & Fenninger, LLP, we understand that comprehensive estate planning is about much more than simply deciding where your money goes when you pass from this world. With a smartly designed legal strategy, you can create and implement an estate plan that goes to work for you right away. That’s why we promote the use of forward-thinking tools like advanced health care directives and living trusts as key components of a comprehensive estate plan.

By combining traditional wills and trusts with these other tools, we can provide you with peace of mind, clarity for your family, seamless transitions for your business interests, potential tax benefits, and—in the case of advanced health care directives—a high level of control over your medical future, even if you should be too incapacitated to express your wishes for yourself.

What Are Advance Directives, and Why Do You Need One in North Carolina?

Advance directives are legal documents that outline your preferences regarding various issues and decisions that will become legally binding in situations when you are unable to communicate your wishes for yourself. Advanced health care directives specifically deal with medical treatment and health care decisions.

One common example of an issue covered in advanced medical directives is whether to continue life-sustaining treatment for an individual who has been pronounced brain dead or is otherwise unlikely to recover. Having a well-drafted, legally sound advanced health care directive is essential for individuals who want to proactively manage their health care options and be prepared for any possibility.

Why Do I Need an Advance Health Care Directive Attorney?

When it comes to understanding all the nuances of advance directives, similar tools like powers of attorney, and how to leverage these details to your advantage under North Carolina law, the team of dedicated attorneys and highly knowledgeable support staff at Orsbon & Fenninger, LLP, can offer high-quality guidance and powerful advocacy that allows you to move through the estate planning process with confidence.

Creating and properly filing an advanced health care directive is a process that is highly personal and highly technical. Working with legal counsel who understands this is paramount to ensuring that your own advance health care directive and your overall estate plan work exactly the way you need them to.

While some low-end firms may offer basic will preparation services for a low flat fee, it takes a particular set of skills, education, and legal background to assemble wills, trusts, advance directives, and other tools in a complementary way to create an estate plan that is stronger than its individual parts. At Orsbon & Fenninger, LLP, we offer detail-oriented, highly personalized legal solutions to create comprehensive estate plans for our clients.

What Does an Advance Health Care Directive Cover?

Some of the many important issues that can be addressed through an advanced health care directive include:

• End-of-Life Care: Clearly outlining your wishes for end-of-life care in a legally binding way ensures that those wishes are respected by health care professionals and understood by your family ahead of time.
• Life-Prolonging Treatments: When patients enter a persistent vegetative state, a difficult decision that must be made is whether to continue life-prolonging treatments. Providing specific directions in this area allows you to maintain control over the type and duration of life-extending medical interventions, removing that burden from your family.
• Organ and Tissue Donation: Like many states, North Carolina allows you to join a registry and receive a heart symbol on your driver’s license or state ID, which indicates that you are willing to donate your organs upon your passing.Clearly expressing your intentions regarding organ and tissue donation through an advanced health care directive, however, allows you a much tighter level of control in this area. As just one example, donating your body to scientific research is an entirely different process from the organ donor registry and requires making arrangements with a reputable area medical educator like Duke or UNC.
• Pain Management Preferences: Detailing specific instructions and wishes regarding the management of pain allows medical professionals to consider your comfort levels, personal preferences, and history with medications during a medical intervention, even if you aren’t in a condition to discuss these matters.
• Choice of Health Care Proxy: Designating a trusted individual as your health care agent is a key benefit of advanced health care directives.By doing so, you empower this individual (for example, your spouse, partner, child, close friend, or even a trusted medical professional with whom you have a close relationship) to make health care decisions on your behalf so that you don’t have to put down all of your wishes in detail for every possible medical circumstance.
• Resuscitation Situations: Clearly stating your desires regarding resuscitation measures like cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can provide critical guidance to medical professionals for emergency situations, terminal conditions, and end-of-life care.
• Medication Choices: An advance directive is also an effective way to outline your desires regarding the use of certain medications, helping medical professionals tailor treatment options to your preferences and beliefs.
• Artificial Nutrition: Some people, particularly those with dietary concerns, will use an advanced medical directive to express their preferences regarding sustenance in situations when oral intake of food is not possible, e.g., tube feeding.
• Experimental Treatments: In some cases, such as rare cancers, it may be important for your family and doctors to know your stance on participating in medical research, experimental treatment options, or even specific medical innovations that are of particular concern to you.
• Religious Considerations: You should also use the drafting of your advanced health care directives to include any religious or spiritual considerations that you would like your medical team to be aware of. To keep your directive concise and legally coherent, you should limit this to religious considerations that could potentially inform medical care decisions or that could be reasonably incorporated into a medical treatment plan.

When it comes to health care, each individual’s preferences are unique and will be informed by their culture, lifestyle, beliefs, and previous medical history. Although these conversations can be difficult to initiate, it is often a good idea to discuss the above issues with loved ones and trusted health care providers prior to contacting Orsbon & Fenninger, LLP, to begin working on your estate plan.

Key Components of Advanced Health Care Directives

An advanced health care directive is typically divided into two or three sections, as it is actually made up of distinct instruments that work together to provide comprehensive coverage:

1. Health Care Power of Attorney – A power of attorney, or POA, is a powerful legal instrument that names a trusted individual—often a spouse, child, another family member, close friend, or hired advisor—to make decisions on your behalf if you are unable to do so.The concept can be applied to financial or business decisions, but in the case of a health care power of attorney (HCPOA), you can appoint a “health care agent” who can make decisions on your behalf if you are unable to communicate or if you cannot make fully cognizant choices for yourself.Your Charlotte advanced health care directive attorneys from Orsbon & Fenninger, LLP, excel in crafting air-tight directives that fully align with both your personal goals and North Carolina law.
2. Living Will/Health Care Instructions – A living will can be implemented to outline your preferences for medical treatment in specific situations, such as life-prolonging measures, organ donation, or particular types of medications.Our attorneys work closely with our clients to ensure that their living wills reflect their individual values and desires regarding end-of-life care and emergency treatments without placing unintended restrictions on their ability to receive high-quality medical treatment.

Orsbon & Fenninger, LLP: Crafting Peace of Mind Through Personalized Estate Plans and Health Care Directives

At Orsbon & Fenninger, LLP, we know that health care directives, powers of attorney, wills, and the other elements of a truly comprehensive estate plan are deeply personal and, therefore, require a collaborative, client-driven approach. Our commitment goes beyond legal advice and document preparation, as we strive to create a full-featured estate plan that comprehends and respects your values, your concerns, your hopes for the future, and your family.

While our team is adept at crafting advanced health care directives through the drafting of legally binding living wills, health care instructions, and powers of attorney, please also be aware that our services extend to various other key areas in estate planning law and beyond. This includes robust estate planning and estate administration solutions for estates of all sizes and individuals of all ages, from the effective use of trusts to helping clients understand the intricacies of elder law and how it intersects with health care.

Get Personalized Estate Planning Guidance Today

Whatever your estate planning needs, contact our Charlotte offices today to get started. We can help you effectively navigate the estate planning process, offering high-end legal solutions to accomplish your unique goals and ensure your estate plan adheres to your wishes and the law, no matter what the future may hold.