Most people have thought about their inevitable death. They've also considered the potential of becoming brain-dead, finding themselves in need of major organ transplants, or otherwise becoming seriously physically or mentally damaged. In all three of these instances, the affected, injured persons would be subject to intensive medical care. Some people simply wouldn't want to live if they lost their mental faculties, physical capabilities, or needed extensive life support to survive.
Information. Living wills, also known as directives to physicians or healthcare directives, are legal documents that contain people's wishes regarding how they want to be treated in the event they can't communicate their wants and needs to others. All 50 states across the United States legally recognize living wills, though each state is different in terms of what is considered to be legally binding or not. Living wills frequently cover topics like organ donation, being resuscitated if found unconscious or unresponsive, or being tube-fed. People can also opt to receive all available types of medical treatments in the event they can't communicate their wills to live.
When to get a will. The older people get, the more likely they are to pass away at any given moment. As such, it's much better to create legitimate, legally-recognized living wills as soon as possible. After people hit the milestone of their eighteenth birthdays, they are legally considered able to publish and authorize their own living wills. Considering the fact that life doesn't last forever, people are best off - in theory, that is - getting living wills as soon as they turn 18. However, keep in mind that the majority of Americans who create living wills are nearing the end of their lives.
Using a lawyer. In the United States, attorneys must attend both undergraduate school and its graduate, professional counterpart. Most attorneys end up pursuing higher education for seven years, after which they are eligible to take their states' residence of rigorous, strenuous bar exams. Even after all of this preparation, attorneys still need tons of on-the-job training. Attorneys essentially subject themselves to such extensive training just to speak legalese, a specialized form of English used in legal proceedings. Using a lawyer to craft a living will takes the pain out of creating such legal documents. Further, they often guarantee that the living wills they pump out will be legally recognized by the jurisdictions they're tied to.
Writing your own will. In many cases, living wills are only one page long, making them relatively easy to create in terms of other legal documents. Before thinking any further into writing one's own will, it's important for people to look to Google and other websites for existing templates of living wills that are available for free. People who write their own living wills should be especially careful to list all the potential situations in which living wills could be exercised and make plans to formally deal with them. Such instructions should be painfully clear and obvious, meaning there would be no reasonable alternative interpretations outside of your very own interpretation of them.
What to include in a will. First off, understand that there's nothing wrong with extensive detail in living wills. With this in mind, people who are considering drafting living wills should be as descriptive as possible. Living wills don't have to include every plausible scenario in which living wills could be carried out, though they should include every situation that their owners want to provide further instructions on. Know that living wills are leaps and bounds different than their one-word counterparts - regular, plain-Jane, run-of-the-mill wills. As such, people will not need to include anything about their wishes to be buried, cremated, or otherwise disposed of following their death. Living wills also are not for executing people's nest eggs, or lifetime accumulations of earnings, savings, and investment gains.