Hand of a shirt-wearing, seated man writes on printed Din A4 pages.

The Liv­ing Will

The liv­ing will is intend­ed for the event that you can no longer make a deci­sion about the type of med­ical treat­ment you want. This can be age-relat­ed, e.g. B. due to demen­tia or Alzheimer’s or due to an acci­dent after which you are in a coma. 

Every­one knows that these sit­u­a­tions can arise, but only about ¼ of the adult pop­u­la­tion has writ­ten an advance direc­tive. Do you belong? If “no”, address the issue now, because the sit­u­a­tion can arise regard­less of age. 

One of the most impor­tant rea­sons for mak­ing a liv­ing will is that you should be self-deter­mined to the last. Don’t let oth­ers make a deci­sion that you might not have made your­self. And take away the bur­den of mak­ing deci­sions from oth­ers, e.g. your chil­dren, who are often over­whelmed in these situations.

Doc­tors and nurs­es must be able to deter­mine from the liv­ing will what type and scope of treat­ment and care you want. The Fed­er­al Court of Jus­tice (BGH) has made some very detailed deci­sions on the type and con­tent of liv­ing wills. On the one hand, the sit­u­a­tions must be specif­i­cal­ly described in which a named treat­ment is to take place and the med­ical mea­sures that you want or do not want must be specif­i­cal­ly described. 

While the descrip­tion of the sit­u­a­tions can still be pre­sent­ed “rel­a­tive­ly” eas­i­ly, it becomes more dif­fi­cult when describ­ing the spe­cif­ic mea­sures. In any case, it is not enough just to decree that you do not want life-sus­tain­ing mea­sures. Also, the request is not enough to enable a dig­ni­fied death if it is fore­see­able that heal­ing is no longer pos­si­ble. With orders of this kind, it is not clear whether you want arti­fi­cial nutri­tion or not, for exam­ple. They are there­fore inef­fec­tive, with the result that you receive arti­fi­cial nutri­tion even though you did not want this.

Arm attached to medical device, with gloved nurse in red attire attached.

Although the BGH states that the require­ments for a liv­ing will must not be exag­ger­at­ed, there are a num­ber of impor­tant areas on which a spe­cif­ic deci­sion should be made. These are:

  • pain and symp­tom man­age­ment; For exam­ple, would you like to be giv­en mor­phine to relieve pain, even though it may short­en your life?
  • arti­fi­cial feed­ing and ven­ti­la­tion; a spe­cif­ic def­i­n­i­tion should also be made for this
  • revival; do you want this or not
  • dial­y­sis, blood trans­fu­sion, antibi­otics; do you want such treat­ment or assignment?
  • life sup­port mea­sures; Here it is fun­da­men­tal to deter­mine whether you want life-sus­tain­ing mea­sures or not. This can hap­pen depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion, i.e. in the case of an incur­able dis­ease where there is no prospect of suc­cess­ful ther­a­py, you can do with­out, in oth­er cas­es you can decide to do so.
  • Deter­mine the loca­tion of your treat­ment and decide whether you want to be cared for in the hospital/hospice or at home.
  • Appoint an autho­rized rep­re­sen­ta­tive. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant because you need some­one who will ensure that your wish­es from the liv­ing will are actu­al­ly imple­ment­ed. Remem­ber: the advance direc­tive is for when you are unable to act your­self. So you also write a pow­er of attor­ney and a care direc­tive (see my legal tip).

As you can see, the sub­ject is com­plex and error-prone. Forms offered on the Inter­net are often out­dat­ed and lack the nec­es­sary expla­na­tion and individuality. 

So if you want to draw up a liv­ing will, take pro­fes­sion­al advice. You decide whether you want a made-to-mea­sure suit or ready-to-wear. 

I look for­ward to a call to make an appointment.

Hans-Peter Rien
Lawyer — medi­a­tor — cert. Execu­tor (AGT)
Fer­di­nand-Maria-Straße 30
80639 Munich
Phone: +49 (0) 89 / 129 73 86
rechtsanwalt-rien@t‑online.de

www.rechtsanwalt-rien.de

Leave a Reply