If you couldn’t speak for yourself in a Palm Beach hospital tomorrow, who would make your medical decisions, and would they know what you’d want? Florida’s advance directives answer both questions. They’re inexpensive to put in place and they spare your family agonizing guesswork during a crisis.
The Health Care Surrogate
A designation of health care surrogate names a person to make medical decisions for you if you can’t make them yourself. Under Florida’s advance-directive law (Chapter 765), this surrogate can talk to your doctors, review records, and consent to or refuse treatment on your behalf. You can even authorize your surrogate to act immediately, while you still have capacity, which is convenient if you want a spouse or adult child handling appointments and paperwork now.
The Living Will
A living will is different from the surrogate designation. It states your own wishes about life-prolonging procedures if you have a terminal condition, an end-stage condition, or a persistent vegetative state. Instead of leaving a wrenching choice to loved ones, your living will speaks for you. Pairing it with a health care surrogate gives you both a decision-maker and clear guidance for that decision.
HIPAA Authorization
Federal privacy law can block even close family from getting medical information. A HIPAA release lets your surrogate and chosen family members access the records they need to make informed decisions. It’s a small document that prevents a frustrating roadblock at exactly the wrong moment.
What Happens Without Them
If you have no advance directives and lose capacity, Florida law provides a list of people — called proxies — who can decide for you in priority order, starting with a spouse. That sounds tidy, but it can cause real problems: the law’s default decision-maker may not be the person you’d choose, family members may disagree, and in some situations a court guardianship becomes necessary. Advance directives let you control who decides and on what terms, rather than leaving it to a statute.
Keeping Them Accessible
An advance directive only helps if it can be found. Give copies to your surrogate and physicians, keep one with your estate planning records, and consider noting where they’re stored. For Palm Beach residents who spend part of the year up north, keep your documents reachable in both locations and make sure your surrogate knows how to obtain them quickly.
Review After Life Changes
Revisit your directives after a marriage, divorce, or the death of a named surrogate, and whenever your wishes shift. Florida lets you revoke or update these documents at any time while you have capacity.
Talk to a Florida Attorney
Advance directives are among the simplest and most important parts of an estate plan. A licensed Florida estate planning attorney can prepare a surrogate designation, living will, and HIPAA release tailored to your wishes so your Palm Beach family is never left guessing.
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For more on our Florida practice, see our overview of estate planning in Boca Raton. Morgan Legal Group's affiliated New York office also handles .
