Are My Advance Directives Confidential in North Palm Beach?

Estate planning in North Palm Beach is a highly personal process. When you make decisions about your health care, you might be concerned about other people finding out. This is a perfectly understandable concern, whether you’re creating a health care surrogate form or advance directives. Will your forms be confidential? This is a question you might want to raise during a consultation with a North Palm Beach estate planning attorney.

Why It Might Be Important to Keep Advance Directives Private

People have all kinds of reasons for keeping their advance directives private. Some might not want people to know about certain objections they have to certain treatments. For example, an individual might want to keep their religious objections to stem-cell-based treatments or blood transfusions.

Others might be uncomfortable with their close family members learning of these decisions. For example, you might have decided that you want doctors to remove you from life support immediately after falling into a coma. Your relatives might not understand why, and you may dread having to explain your logic to them. You might also know that your relatives will try to convince you not to make these kinds of decisions.

In these kinds of situations and many others, confidentiality is an obvious and understandable priority. The question is whether Florida actually protects your privacy.

Health Care Surrogates Are Supposed to Be Private

Your health care surrogate form is designed to be confidential. This form allows you to designate someone to make medical decisions on your behalf if you ever become incapacitated. No one can discover who you have chosen as your health care surrogate unless you make this decision known.

As a medical document, your health care surrogate form is protected under medical privacy laws in Florida. You will need to inform your chosen surrogate of their responsibility, and you may also want to tell them to keep your decision private. However, they are under no obligation to do so.

Advance Directives Are Also Confidential

Like your health care surrogate form, your advance directive is also confidential in Florida. These directives are part of your medical records, and they are sealed from public view as a result. The only people who can access these directives are authorized health care providers. If you do not want to tell your family members about the decisions you’ve made, you are under no legal obligation to do so.

Why Many Tell Their Families Anyway 

That said, many people choose to tell their families about the decisions they’ve made with health care surrogate forms and advance directives. They do this to minimize shock and stress in the future, especially if you have made a decision that your loved ones might not have expected.

Can an Estate Planning Attorney in North Palm Beach Help Me? 

If you’re concerned about privacy when creating your estate plan in North Palm Beach, you might want to speak with an experienced attorney. While online research provides basic information, a consultation could be much more insightful. Discuss your unique concerns today with Kitroser Lewis & Mighdoll.

Source: 

leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0765/0765.html