Living will requirements in Connecticut

Which document is this, really

Connecticut does not force you into a single format. You can sign a stand-alone Living Will, which states only your treatment wishes; a stand-alone Appointment of Health Care Representative, which names only the person who decides for you; or, most commonly, one combined document that does both at once. The combined form reaches further than most states’ single form: alongside your living will and your representative appointment, it can also name a conservator to manage your affairs if you later become incapable, and record an anatomical gift, in the same signing.

Whichever route you choose, the same signing rule applies to all three versions. Connecticut’s printed forms are optional and the statute says so in its own words: the stand-alone appointment form may, but need not, be used, and the living will and the combined document each introduce a form your document may be in substantially. What the law fixes is the signing, not the wording.

This is the shape Myend’s free Healthcare Directive is built around: one document, your representative and your wishes together, formatted to Connecticut’s requirements.

Who can make a Connecticut living will

You need to be 18 or older. Connecticut’s statute states the number directly, the same way across all three signing routes: any person eighteen years of age or older may execute the document. Being 18 is what the law asks. The practical companion to it, understanding what you are signing and what it does, is not a separate legal test so much as the reason the ceremony below asks two witnesses to watch you do it.

Signing it so it counts

Connecticut runs the same signing ceremony whether you sign the stand-alone living will, the stand-alone representative appointment, or the combined document.

1. 1You sign

   You sign and date the document yourself. Connecticut’s chapter names the maker as the person who signs, and sets up no route for anyone to sign in your place.

2. 2Two witnesses sign

   Your document is signed and dated by you with at least two witnesses. Where it appoints a health care representative, Connecticut is more specific: you sign in the presence of two adult witnesses, who then sign the document themselves.

3. 3No notary needed

   Connecticut does not ask for a notary on any of the three routes. Two witnesses are what make your document valid.

The person you are appointing as your health care representative cannot also serve as one of your two witnesses; this is the one witness rule Connecticut applies to everyone signing an appointment. Beyond that, Connecticut does not bar your relatives, your heirs, or your own physician from serving as an ordinary witness, which is unusual among states that write health care documents this way. One more rule applies only if you live in a facility run or licensed by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, or by the Department of Developmental Services, at the time you sign: at least one of your two witnesses has to be someone with no connection to that facility, and at least one has to be a physician, an advanced practice registered nurse, or a licensed clinical psychologist trained in the relevant field. The trigger is where you live, not where you happen to be sitting when you sign, so a facility resident who signs at a lawyer’s office is still covered, and a visitor who happens to sign inside such a facility is not.

Naming your health care representative

Connecticut calls this person your representative, formally your health care representative, the person you authorize to make medical decisions once your document takes effect.

Three groups are barred by statute. An operator, administrator, or employee of a hospital, residential care home, rest home with nursing supervision, or chronic and convalescent nursing home cannot be your representative if you are, at the time you sign, a patient or resident of that facility, or have applied to become one, unless that person is related to you by blood, marriage, or adoption. An administrator or employee of a government agency financially responsible for your medical care is barred outright, with no such family exception. And your representative cannot also be the physician or advanced practice registered nurse attending you; Connecticut does not let one person hold both roles for the same patient at the same time.

Once your representative’s authority takes effect, they act for you in the medical decisions you would otherwise make yourself.

When it takes effect

Signing your document does not switch it on immediately. It becomes operative once two things happen: your attending physician or advanced practice registered nurse has a copy of it, and that same attending physician or APRN determines you are incapacitated.

Actually withholding or withdrawing life support asks for one more step, and the step depends on why. If your attending physician is certifying a terminal condition, their own determination is what the law asks for. If the question is permanent unconsciousness instead, the attending physician has to reach that conclusion in consultation with a physician qualified to make a neurological diagnosis, who has personally examined you.

If you are pregnant

Connecticut’s statutory forms, both the stand-alone living will and the combined document, ask you directly what should happen if you are pregnant when your document would otherwise take effect. The form gives you three ways to answer: check a box saying you want to accept life support if your doctor believes doing so would allow the pregnancy to reach a live birth, check a box saying you want your document to apply exactly as written with no change, or write in your own alternative instructions.

Until 2018, Connecticut set the choice aside automatically for the whole of a pregnancy. That automatic rule was repealed effective May 24, 2018, in the same act that added the pregnancy section described above to the statutory forms. Today, if you leave the pregnancy question blank, Connecticut law does not supply an answer for you. Marking one of the boxes, or writing your own instructions, is the only way to be sure your document is read the way you intend.

Changing or cancelling it

The living will part and the representative appointment part are revoked differently, and the difference is worth knowing if you signed the combined document.

You can revoke your living will at any time, in any manner, regardless of your mental or physical condition when you do it. Connecticut sets a deliberately low bar here: telling someone, tearing it up, writing “revoked” across it, all count.

Revoking your appointment of a representative asks for more. It has to be in writing, and that writing has to be signed by you and by two witnesses, the same signing rule as making the appointment in the first place. One revocation happens automatically without you doing anything: if you named your spouse as your representative and you later divorce, have the marriage annulled, or legally separate, that appointment ends on its own unless you specifically said in the document that you want it to continue.

Making sure it is found

Give copies to your representative, your physician, and any hospital you are likely to use, and tell your family where the signed original is kept. A document nobody can find does no good in the moment it matters.

If you signed your document somewhere else and are later treated in Connecticut, Connecticut law honors it, on two conditions written into the statute: the document has to have been executed in compliance with the law of that state or with Connecticut’s own, and it cannot be contrary to Connecticut public policy. A provider here may rely on it on the strength of a court order, a notarized statement that both conditions are met, or the provider’s own good faith legal analysis.

This is not a MOLST

Connecticut’s medical-order program is called MOLST, Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment. It is different from your living will or your representative appointment. A MOLST is a set of medical orders your own clinician signs with you once you are already facing a serious illness, meant to travel with you between hospital, nursing facility, and home. Myend prepares your living will and your appointment of a representative, the documents you fill out ahead of time, for a future you cannot yet see. It does not produce a MOLST, which has to come from a conversation with your own treating clinician.

What is different about Connecticut

Connecticut does not tell you what to do about pregnancy. It asks you, in writing, before anything happens.

Two things set Connecticut apart from most of the states around it. The first is the pregnancy question itself. Rather than suspending your document automatically for the length of a pregnancy, the way a number of states still do, Connecticut repealed that automatic rule in 2018 and replaced it with a direct question on the form: accept life support if it would let the pregnancy reach a live birth, apply the document as written, or say something else in your own words. Leaving it blank does not trigger a state-supplied answer. It leaves the question genuinely open.

The second is who is allowed to watch you sign. Many states rule out your relatives, anyone who stands to inherit from you, or your own physician from serving as a witness. Connecticut does not. The only witness rule that reaches everyone is that your representative cannot also witness their own appointment. A narrower rule adds two more conditions, but only if you live in a facility run or licensed by the state’s mental health or developmental services departments when you sign, keyed to where you live rather than where you happen to sign.

Put together, Connecticut asks less of who can witness you and more of what you decide in advance, especially about pregnancy, than most states nearby.

Common questions

Sources and review