What I Learned from Schiavo (Essays‪)‬

By the time I retired as a lawyer specializing in estate planning and conservatorships, I must have drafted at least a thousand durable powers of attorney for health care. Because of their adaptability to unforeseeable contingencies, DPAHCs are the preferred form of advance health care directive for most Americans. They work by identifying someone--an "agent"--to apply general instructions to circumstances in which the "principal" can no longer make particular wishes known. As a disproportionate number of my clients, while still legally competent, were already suffering from terminal illnesses that typically end in a significant period of incapacity, both the clients and I had every reason to explore thoroughly the range of available options in wording their advance health care directives. I had ample reason to be careful in my own DPAHC, too, as I've had a couple of close encounters with death in recent years. But my health care providers helped me to dodge the bullets and live (quite happily, as it turns out) to tell about them.