Living will requirements in Arizona

Which document is this, really

Arizona actually asks you to think about two different documents. The first is your Living Will, a written statement of the treatment you do and do not want if you can no longer speak for yourself. The second is the Health Care Power of Attorney, the separate statutory instrument for naming someone to make those decisions on your behalf. The person you name in it is your agent.

Arizona treats these as two distinct instruments, not one combined form. A Living Will is defined as a statement written either on its own or as an attachment to a Health Care Power of Attorney you already have, so combining them is a choice you make, not the state’s built-in default. Both documents come with a sample form printed right in the statute, headed “Sample health care power of attorney” and “Sample living will”, and both are explicitly optional. You are free to use your own wording instead of either one.

This is exactly the pairing Myend’s Healthcare Directive prepares for Arizona: a Living Will for your wishes, and a Health Care Power of Attorney for your agent, each ready for Arizona’s signing rule.

Who can make an Arizona advance directive

Arizona asks one thing of you in the statute itself: that you are an adult. Arizona law does not define “adult” inside the chapter that governs Living Wills and Health Care Powers of Attorney; it borrows the state’s general definition, which sets the line at eighteen years of age. That single line is what both your Living Will and your Health Care Power of Attorney rest on.

Signing it so it counts

Arizona applies the identical signing rule to both documents. Whichever one you are completing, the Health Care Power of Attorney or a Living Will signed on its own, the law asks for the same thing: one adult witness, or a notary instead, never both.

The Health Care Power of Attorney

1. 1You sign

   You sign the Health Care Power of Attorney, or direct someone to sign for you in your presence.

2. 2One witness, or a notary

   Arizona asks for only one: either a single adult witness watches you sign and confirms it in writing, or you have the document notarized instead. It is one or the other, never both.

3. 3If you use a witness

   Your witness cannot be the agent you are naming, and cannot be a health care provider directly involved in your care at the time you sign. That same provider restriction applies if you choose a notary instead, so a treating provider cannot notarize it either. And because Arizona lets a single witness stand in for what most states ask two people to do, that one witness also cannot be related to you by blood, marriage or adoption, and cannot stand to inherit anything from your estate.

The Living Will

If you also sign a Living Will, whether on its own or attached to your Power of Attorney, Arizona applies this exact rule again. The statute instructs a person completing a standalone Living Will to verify it “in the same manner” the Health Care Power of Attorney requires. One witness or a notary, the same disqualifications, no separate ceremony to learn.

Naming your agent

In your Health Care Power of Attorney you name your agent, the person authorized to make health care decisions for you once your incapacity is established. Arizona’s eligibility bar is narrow and specific: it is not about your relationship to that person, it is about their professional record. A person cannot serve as your agent if their license or certification as a fiduciary has been suspended or revoked, unless they are related to you by blood, adoption or marriage, or their license has since been reinstated and is in good standing. Those are two independent ways around the bar, not one combined condition.

Outside that one rule, Arizona’s chapter does not stop a health care provider treating you from serving as your agent, even though that same provider is barred from acting as your witness or your notary. Being unable to witness your signature and being unable to act on your behalf later are two different questions, and Arizona only answers one of them with a restriction.

When it takes effect

Arizona ties both documents to the same trigger, and states it in plain terms rather than through a certification procedure. If an adult patient is unable to make or communicate health care treatment decisions, a health care provider has to make a reasonable effort to locate and then follow a health care directive. The agent named in a Health Care Power of Attorney is, in the statute’s words, “entitled to make and communicate these decisions while the principal is unable to do so.” There is no separate step in the chapter where a physician certifies your incapacity in writing before either document takes effect.

If you are pregnant

Arizona does not set an automatic rule for pregnancy the way some states do. The sample Living Will printed in the statute offers one paragraph on the subject, and it is something you choose to initial, not a default you have to opt out of. That paragraph says that if you are known to be pregnant, you do not want life-sustaining treatment withheld or withdrawn if it is possible the pregnancy could reach live birth with continued treatment. Nothing in the chapter switches that rule on if you leave the paragraph blank. Since the form itself is offered only as a sample, your Living Will otherwise applies exactly as you wrote it, pregnant or not.

Changing or cancelling it

Arizona writes one revocation rule for every kind of health care directive it recognizes, so the same four routes cover your Living Will and your Health Care Power of Attorney alike. You can make a written revocation. You can tell your surrogate or a health care provider out loud. You can make a new health care directive, which the chapter lists as a way of revoking the earlier one. Or you can do any other act that demonstrates a specific intent to revoke.

No particular form is prescribed for any of those. What is worth doing anyway is telling the people who hold the old document, your agent, your physician and the hospital that has a copy on file, so the change reaches whoever would otherwise act on it. If your directive is in the state registry, tell the registry too, although failing to do so does not make an otherwise valid revocation ineffective.

Making sure it is found

Arizona runs a real registry, the Arizona Healthcare Directives Registry, known as AzHDR. The statute has the Department of Health Services designate a qualifying health information exchange organization to operate it, which is a meaningfully different setup from a state that only keeps a list of names on file: the same law lets a health care provider access the registry and receive your directive documents for the provision of health care. Filing your Living Will and Health Care Power of Attorney with AzHDR at azhdr.org means a treating hospital can pull up the documents directly in an emergency, rather than waiting on you or your family to produce a paper copy. Not filing them costs you nothing legally; the statute says failing to register does not affect a directive’s validity.

Even with a registry, copies remain the backup that never depends on a database being up. Give one to your agent, your physician and the hospital you are most likely to use, and keep the signed original somewhere your family knows to look.

A directive prepared in another state, district or territory of the United States is valid in Arizona if it was valid where and when it was adopted, and only so far as it does not conflict with Arizona’s criminal laws.

This is not a POLST

Arizona’s medical order program is generally known as Arizona POLST, and it now runs as part of the same AzHDR infrastructure that holds your directives. It is a different kind of document from your Living Will. A POLST is a set of specific medical orders that a clinician signs together with someone already facing a serious illness, meant to travel with that person between hospital, nursing facility, home and ambulance. Your Living Will and Health Care Power of Attorney are something you complete in advance, for a future you cannot yet see. Myend prepares the Living Will and the Health Care Power of Attorney. It does not, and cannot, produce a POLST, because that has to come from a treating clinician.

What is different about Arizona

Arizona asks for one witness where most states ask for two, then asks the same light question twice: once for your wishes, once for your agent.

Arizona is one of the lightest states in the country to sign for. A single adult witness, or a notary instead, never both. Most states ask for two witnesses; Arizona asks for one, and applies that same one-witness rule to the Health Care Power of Attorney and, if you sign one separately, to the Living Will too, through a cross-reference written directly into the statute.

The pregnancy clause follows the same lighter touch. Arizona does not impose an automatic rule the way some states do. Its sample Living Will offers a single paragraph about pregnancy that you choose to initial or leave blank, and nothing in the statute switches on a default rule if you skip it.

Arizona’s registry also stands out. AzHDR is run by a health information exchange organization designated by the Department of Health Services, which providers can query directly for your documents, and Arizona’s own medical order program, generally known as Arizona POLST, is presented through that same infrastructure.

One more distinction is worth knowing if you are choosing an agent. Arizona bars a health care provider treating you from acting as your witness or your notary, but that same bar does not extend to serving as your agent. The only agent-eligibility rule in Arizona’s chapter is about a suspended or revoked fiduciary license, not about who is treating you.

Common questions

Sources and review