Make your health care wishes known
Create a Georgia health care directive with FindLaw’s attorney-created forms and easy step-by-step process.
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Make your health care wishes known so you stay in control of your treatment with a health care directive. Ensure comprehensive protection for you and your loved ones and secure your future with an estate planning forms package.
Health Care Directive
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Benefits of a Georgia health care directive
A health care directive is an integral part of your estate plan. A health care directive relieves your family of the burden of making major medical decisions in an emergency. It also directs your medical care. Health care directives allow you to make your health care wishes known, ensuring those wishes are carried out if you become mentally or physically incapable of communicating your decisions.
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How it works
The process takes less than an hour, and you can complete it from the comfort of your home.
Create an account
Create a secure account which is accessible through an easy dashboard you can access any time
Gather information
Decide who will be your health care agent/proxy, which treatments you would request or refuse and release your records
Complete your document
Answer all questions, then we’ll generate your digital documents for downloading, printing, and signing
Make it legal
Print and sign your document according to instructions. Give copies to your doctors and agent/proxy
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Gather critical information with an estate planning checklist
What’s next to validate my Georgia health care directive?
Follow these steps to create your health care directive:
Make significant health care decisions
If you become incapacitated, a health care directive is used to record your preferences. It could be a loss of cognitive function or a catastrophic event leading to permanent unconsciousness. By asserting your medical decisions in a health care directive, you may prevent your health care team or your family from having to make hard decisions when you cannot.
Next, decide whether you wish to have specific medical treatments and medical procedures used and how long you want to receive life-sustaining treatment. Examples include:
- Hydration-feeding tubes
- Feeding tubes
- Admittance into skilled nursing facilities
- Admittance into an adult care facility
Choose an agent
If you become unable to make decisions for yourself, you will need a health care agent you trust to carry out your wishes. This person must be capable of ensuring that your wishes are honored by health care providers. When a health care provider refuses to honor your wishes, it is your agent’s responsibility to ensure that you are taken to another physician or another facility that will keep your wishes.
Sign and notarize
You must sign your advance directives in Georgia. Under Georgia state law, the document must also be physically observed and signed by at least two witnesses. They do not need to actually view you signing the document.
Frequently asked questions about Georgia health care directives
In Georgia, a health care directive is also called an advance directive or living will. Patients who become incapacitated can use this document to take responsibility for their medical treatment. They provide autonomy by stating your wishes and directing health care professionals as to your preferred methods of treatment. Additionally, having your wishes recorded in a health care directive takes the pressure off your family to make medical decisions in emergency situations.
To complete a health care directive in Georgia, you must be at least 18 years old or an emancipated minor. You must be of sound mind, and your health care directive must include information regarding your chosen health care agent.
The document must be physically witnessed by two competent adults. However, the two witnesses don’t need watch each other, or you, sign the document for it to be valid.
A health care directive does not require the services of an attorney in Georgia.
FindLaw is not a law firm, and the forms are not a substitute for the advice or services of an attorney. If you prefer to have an attorney create your document, check out FindLaw’s attorney directory.
When you execute a health care directive in Georgia, it becomes effective. It cannot be revoked by family or medical providers.
Under Georgia state law, you are protected from the misconduct of health care professionals and facilities. If your doctor fails or refuses to comply with your wishes, your health care agent must make a good faith effort to transfer you to another care provider.
A health care proxy or health care agent can act on behalf of an incapacitated person under Georgia law. As stated in a health care directive, or power of attorney, a health care agent’s authority is limited to what the declarant allows.
Health care agents are empowered to act on behalf of incapacitated declarants. Still, they are expressly prohibited from consenting to:
- Psychosurgery
- Procedures resulting in sterilization
- Involuntary hospitalization
You can modify your health care directive if your circumstances change. It can be revoked at any time after it has been executed. In Georgia, a health care directive is revoked in one of four ways:
- Making a new health care directive by changing or revoking any provisions you wish to change or cancel
- Destroying the health care directive by physical means (e.g., burning, tearing, etc.)
- Revoking a health care directive provision or a statement that revokes the entire document
- Orally revoking in front of a competent adult witness, who must then swear (in writing and within 30 days) that the declarant made the statement of revocation
You may want to speak with a lawyer if:
- Your family disagrees with your medical choices
- You don’t know who to appoint as your agent
- You have questions about life prolonging measures
- You want legal review of your completed document
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