Your Medical Power of Attorney is your most important estate planning document and the one most likely to be needed on short notice.

By J.R. Robinson, Financial Planner (July 2024) 

The Medical Power of Attorney  – also known as Advance Health Care Directive, Health Care Proxy,  and Power of Attorney for Health Care – is arguably the most important of your estate planning documents and is the one that is most likely to be needed on short notice.  However, if the people you named to act on your behalf are unaware of their roles and/or do not have a copy of the document, then the document may be worthless.   

As part of my initiative to make sure our clients’ estate planning documents are implemented properly when they are needed, I urge all clients to take the following steps – 

• If you are married and have named your spouse to act as your agent for health are decisions, verify that you have named at least one alternate.  This is critically important, particularly in the event of an accident in which you and your spouse are simultaneously incapacitated.  

• Keep a medical authorization card in your wallet to notify first responders and your doctors who to contact to make medical decisions for you. 

• Make sure the alternate agents named in your document are aware of their responsibilities. 

• Make sure all alternate agents have copies of your healthcare directive. 

• You should also expect your alternate agents to lose the copies.  Make sure they know where they can go to obtain another copy if needed. 

• Keep digital copies of your advance health care directive and all others in which you were named in your eMoney Vault. 

• Give a copy of your AHCD to your primary care physician. 

• Make sure you have copies of any advance medical directives in which other people have named you to act as their agents for health care decisions. 

• Make sure your adult children age 18+ have drafted their advanced directives too.  It is a parent’s worst nightmare to have an adult child who is injured in an accident and be unable to get information about the child’s condition because the doctors do not know the status of their relationship with the child. 

NOTE:  As a free benefit for Financial Planning Hawaii and Fee-Only Planning Hawaii Clients, we are now able to offer our clients free preparation of Advance Health Care Directives and Financial Powers of Attorney through Estate Guru. 

Related Reading: 

Keep your advance directive save but accessible (Harvard Health Publishing) 

American Medical ID Cards – Expandable Wallet Card 

John H. Robinson is the owner/founder of Financial Planning Hawaii and Fee-Only Planning Hawaii. He is also a co-founder of fintech software maker Nest Egg Guru and the Creator of the Nest Egg Guru Personal Finance website.