Why Every Adult Needs a Health Care Proxy Today

Who Will Speak for You

We lost someone close to us last month. She was forty-nine. Heart attack. No warning. She was on life support for a little while. She had a daughter in middle school, a husband who loved her, grief-stricken parents, and no one legally designated to make decisions for her.

Her parents knew that she would not have wanted to live in a vegetative state. Her husband, who couldn't accept letting her go, ultimately agreed with them. But the word ultimately is doing a lot of work in that sentence. While things got sorted out through the courts, important decisions were being delayed.

None of that needed to happen the way it did. She was forty-nine. She didn't think she needed to worry about this yet. Most of us don't, and that's exactly the problem.

This conversation about advance directives comes up constantly in our work, and it isn't really about aging at all. It's about all of us.

It can be incredibly hard and frustrating to try to get an older loved one to complete planning documents. Giving permission for someone to make decisions for you feels like an overstep of privacy to many older people, especially. Or they resist because the conversation is framed around their getting old.

So Alyson and I stopped pushing. Instead, we went to our parents and told them we had just named each other as our healthcare proxies and powers of attorney.

Car accidents happen. Bolts of lightning happen. If something happens to one of us, we want the other to know how we feel about things like life support. It's not a pleasant conversation, but most of us want a say in what happens to us if the worst comes.

Naming someone to make decisions for you doesn't hand over your private information. It doesn't change anything unless you're actually incapacitated. It simply means someone you trust is legally allowed to speak for you if you can't speak for yourself.

That's what shifted it for our parents. They agreed to at least complete their Health Care Proxies. A great place to start.

This isn't just an aging issue, especially in Massachusetts.

Here's something very important that most people don't realize. Unlike many other states, Massachusetts has no next of kin law.

There is no automatic order of who gets to make your medical decisions when you can't make them yourself. Your spouse doesn't automatically have that right. Neither your adult child nor your parents once you're over eighteen.

Without a Health Care Proxy, the only path forward is guardianship through the Probate and Family Court. A judge. Proof of incapacity. Legal fees. Weeks you don't have while someone you love is lying in a hospital bed. People like our friend's husband can end up in front of a judge asking permission to make decisions they always assumed were theirs.

The Health Care Proxy prevents all of it. One document. Free. It names someone you trust to step in to make your medical decisions the moment a doctor determines you can't speak for yourself. That's the whole fix.

That's why we’re bringing it up.

Where to start:

Honoring Choices Massachusetts. Set Up your health care proxy

Honoring Choices Massachusetts has been doing this work since 2013, and the impact is staggering. Over 2.7 million planning conversations started in this state alone. Free documents in multiple languages. Webinars that actually make sense. A growing network of community partners across the state, including us.

We love this organization. We love what they stand for, and we love how they've taken something most people dread and made it genuinely doable. So here's our only ask. Click the Getting Started link and take a look. You don't have to commit to anything. Two minutes of looking is good, and we think you'll be surprised by how approachable it is.