How To Write A Living Will

MyLivingWill™ - Specify Your Health Care Advance Directives

We have removed the obstacles to writing a Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care.  It is convenient, low cost, and simple. The MyLivingWill™ service allows you to obtain a Living Will form for your State/Province of residence.  You simply print this form on your printer, fill in the blanks, sign it, and have it witnessed to make it a legal document.  It will ask you about your wishes regarding different types of treatment under different conditions, and allow you to set up your Advance Directives --- your Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care (or Healthcare Representative).  All questions are written in plain language, so you don't have to be a legal expert to create your own Advance Directives.  If you live in the U.S. or Canada, the documents can then be printed and signed in front of witnesses to become legally binding documents.

A Living Will gives you some say in the way you will be treated before you die, in a situation where death is otherwise inevitable.  This can be used in two ways --- to put a swift end to intolerable suffering, or to endorse the use of experimental treatment to try and save your life if at all possible.  Most people die in hospitals and often this is after receiving treatment administered in an effort to prolong a person's life.  Medical staff are duty bound to use everything within the powers of modern medicine to keep a patient alive as long as possible, and within those powers there are regulations to be followed.  Medical staff are obliged to preserve a patient's life without necessarily considering the financial or emotional concerns of the patient and loved ones.

A Power of Attorney for Health Care allows you to nominate a Healthcare Representative who can make health care decisions for you when you are incapacitated and unable to make decisions for yourself.  It can be used to complement your Living Will.

The most common use of a Living Will is to express your desire for a voluntary passive euthanasia.  Simply put, this means that medical staff should not artificially preserve your life under specific circumstances which are determined by you.  In addition, your Living Will or "healthcare directive" can express your views on the health care that you wish to receive if you were ever in a permanent coma.

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MyLivingWill™ - Frequently Asked Questions

How much does this service cost?

The MyLivingWill™ service is available for a small charge with any membership package.  It is also included with our Silver II and Gold membership packages.  The complete pricing structure is available on our Prices page.

Are these legal documents?

According to current laws in most jurisdictions, in order to be legal documents your Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care must be signed in the presence of two witnesses, and in most cases in front of a Notary Public.  A Notary Public has the legal standing to administer oaths and officiate over the signing process.  In other words, they are an independent person who will determine that all parties signed of their own free will, and that they are all who they say they are.

However, "electronic signature" laws are moving rapidly and PartingWishes.com is closely monitoring these laws to support the future electronic notarization of documents, or even the electronic signature of your Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care.  It is only a matter of time before this becomes standard practice in preparing legal documents.  According to today's laws you will need to print the Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care you create with the MyLivingWill™ service and have them signed according to the laws in your area.

If properly signed according to the laws in your area, a Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care are legal documents that cannot be over-ridden by your family.

When does a Living Will come into effect?

Unlike a Will, a Living Will comes into effect before you die.  In particular, a Living Will comes into effect if you are mentally incapacitated (e.g. in a coma) or your death has become inevitable, and you are unable to express your wishes yourself.

It expresses any wishes you have for a right to die with dignity, or if you have some views on the health care that you wish to receive.

Is my information secure?

All of your information stored at PartingWishes.com is safe and secure.  Your information is so highly encrypted that nobody has access to this information other than yourself and your trusted Keyholders® using their randomly generated personal key.  Even the owners and administrators of PartingWishes.com are not able to access your information due to the software design and encryption methods used. 

All data passing from your computer to PartingWishes.com is authenticated and encrypted using 128-bit "SSL encryption".  This is the most advanced level of encryption available today, and it means that any information sent from your computer is scrambled in a way which makes it completely unintelligible if intercepted.  When you are on a secure section within the PartingWishes.com site, a padlock will appear at the bottom of your web browser's screen.  This is your assurance that the encryption is in place and that you are communicating across a secure link. 

Furthermore, PartingWishes.com uses an industry standard high security streaming-encryption algorithm known as "RSA" to encrypt all of your information before it is stored online.  To give you a feeling for the level of security provided by this encryption, it has been estimated that with the most efficient algorithms known to date, it would take a computer operating at 1 million instructions per second over 300 quintillion years (that's 3 with 20 zeros behind it!) to break the encryption. That's several trillion times longer than the age of the Earth. 

Can my information get destroyed or lost?

All of our data is securely stored in a highly encrypted format on database servers in the USA. To protect against catastrophic data loss, daily backups are performed on each of our servers to locations in Canada and the U.S. Hence, if any one of our servers experienced technical difficulties, the data would not be at risk.

Furthermore, physical protection of our primary systems includes:

As you can see, we take the security and privacy of all of our member information very seriously.

What countries, states and provinces do you support?

All of our services here at PartingWishes.com are completely international.  They can be used by anyone in any country in the world.  

Services such as MyFuneral™, MyMessages™, MyLife™ and MyMemorials™ do not create legal documents and make no assumptions about your country of residence.  In the US and Canada, we have worked extensively to ensure that the legal documents created by the MyWill™ and MyPowerOfAttorney™ services are up to date with the laws in all of the states in the United States and the provinces in Canada, including: Alabama, Alaska, Alberta, Arizona, Arkansas, British Columbia, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Manitoba, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Prince Edward Island, Rhode Island, Saskatchewan, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Washington D.C., West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Yukon Territory.  Hence, these services can be used to generate legal documents in any state in the United States (with the exception of Louisiana for a last will and testament), and any Canadian province with the exception of Quebec. 

The MyLivingWill™ service is available for all States in the United States except Louisiana, and for all Provinces in Canada except Quebec.

If you have any doubts about the legal standing of any documents in your jurisdiction, feel free to seek legal counsel in your area to have your documents reviewed.

How can I get more information?

For information about the services available, or about PartingWishes.com in general, you can browse this web site or send an email to support@partingwishes.com.  We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

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