As part of the estate planning process, you may want to consider making plans for management of your medical care and business, as well as your finances, should you become incapacitated. You may empower a trusted family member or friend – a proxy decisionmaker – to make decisions for you in consultation with your physician. The main instruments to empower such a proxy decisionmaker in Indiana are a Power of Attorney (with powers that may be limited to the financial, privacy and decisionmaking aspects of medical care) and an Appointment of Representative for Health Care. Both instruments are defined and discussed in the Indiana Code and they are complementary to each other.

Alternately, or even in addition to appointing a proxy, you may attempt to anticipate circumstances in advance and to direct what you would wish done – an “advance directive.” That can include either a “Living Will” (generally refusing treatment if you are incapacitated and terminally ill) or, far less known, a Life-Prolonging Procedures Declaration” (generally requesting treatment if you are incapacitated, even if you are terminally ill). Expert opinion, however, has tended lately to recognize great limitations in the actual operation of Living Wills.