Have you recently prepared an Advance Care Directive?
Previously called Powers of Guardianship, Advance Care Directives enable you to make arrangements for your future health care, end of life, preferred living arrangements and other personal matters. They allow decisions about your future to be made by a person you choose if you lose capacity. Despite the name change to Advance Care Directives, Powers of Guardianship prepared before 1 July 2014 are still valid.
An Advance Care Directive must be in the approved form. Advance Care Directives have been designed so you can prepare them without the need for a solicitor’s involvement. It is intended that they be completed by you in your home with the help of your family. We provide our wills clients a kit free of charge, or alternately forms can be obtained at a small cost from Services SA.
A person giving an Advance Care Directive may appoint one or more adults to be substitute decision makers but there is no obligation to do so and they may simply choose to give directions.
A substitute decision maker can make any decision that the person who gave the directive could have made in respect to their health care, accommodation and personal affairs.