the.com/living will
The only document where silence afterward means you were actually heard.
means A legal document that states in advance which medical treatments you do or don't want if you become unable to speak for yourself, typically near the end of life.
from A 20th-century coinage, built from two plain words put together on purpose: 'living' to distinguish it from the kind of will that only activates after death, and 'will' in its old legal sense of a declared personal wish or testament. The term is usually traced to a 1960s proposal by an American lawyer advocating for patients' rights to direct their own end-of-life care — the idea being you could 'will' your wishes while still alive to make them known, rather than leaving them to others to guess.
- legal name
- advance healthcare directive, in most states
- activates when
- you can't speak for yourself anymore
- common gap
- doesn't name who decides, just what they decide
- pairs with
- a healthcare proxy to actually enforce it