Living will requirements in Utah

Which document is this, really

Utah’s own name for this document is the advance health care directive: a health care instruction, a power of attorney for health care, or both. You can write instructions about your care, name an agent to decide for you, or do both in the same document. Utah also names a third, narrower version, the advance mental health care directive, which uses this same structure but is limited to mental health care.

Utah’s chapter never uses the phrase “living will”. The job that phrase does in other states, writing down the treatment you want and do not want, belongs to the health care instruction half of a Utah advance health care directive.

This is a new law. On January 1, 2026, Utah repealed its former Advance Health Care Directive Act and replaced it with a new chapter, the Uniform Health Care Decisions Act, at Utah Code Title 75A, Chapter 9. Everything on this page describes the rules now in force under that chapter.

Combining the instruction and the power of attorney into one document is allowed, but the two halves are not held to the same formality. Utah’s optional form at 75A-9-110 reflects that split: one part for naming an agent, a separate part for writing instructions, so you can see exactly which formality applies to which part. Using that form is not required. This is the same idea behind Myend’s Healthcare Directive: your wishes and your agent, gathered into one document, formatted to Utah’s rule for each part.

Who can make one in Utah

Utah’s chapter grants this power to an “individual,” which it defines as an adult or an emancipated minor. The chapter itself does not print a number for adulthood; it leans on Utah’s general rule that minority extends to age 18, with one exception: a minor who marries reaches majority regardless of age. So the practical line is 18, or younger if you have married or been emancipated.

Age is not the same question as capacity. Capacity is about understanding, at the moment you sign, what the document does and what it means for your care. Utah presumes an adult has it. Losing capacity later is what can start your agent’s authority, covered below; it does not undo a directive you already signed while you had it.

Signing it so it counts

Utah asks for almost nothing if you are only writing instructions, and one specific thing if you are naming an agent.

A health care instruction, on its own, needs no witness and does not even have to be in writing. Utah defines it as a direction, “whether or not in a record,” which is a wider allowance than most states give: you can put it on paper, or you can simply tell a health care professional what you want. Nothing else is required.

A power of attorney for health care, the part that names your agent, is held to a real formality:

1. 1Put it in a record

   Unlike a bare instruction, naming an agent has to be written down. Utah calls this “a record,” which covers a signed paper form as much as an electronic one.

2. 2You sign

   You sign the power of attorney for health care.

3. 3One adult witness signs

   One adult witness signs too, and that person cannot be the agent you are naming, cannot be the agent’s spouse or cohabitant, which Utah defines as a couple who have lived together for at least a year, and, if you live in or receive care at a nursing home or assisted living facility, cannot be an owner, operator, employee or contractor of that facility. The witness must also reasonably believe you are acting voluntarily and knowingly, and must be present either when you sign or when you tell them the document reflects your wishes.

No notary appears anywhere in Utah’s chapter, for either half of the document. There is no alternative path through notarization the way some states offer, and there is no requirement to use one either.

Naming your agent

The person you name in your power of attorney for health care is your agent, the person authorized to make health care decisions for you once you cannot make them yourself. Utah narrows who that can be in two ways. A person a court has found poses a danger to your well-being cannot serve, even if the court never issued a protective order against them. And an owner, operator, employee or contractor of the nursing home or assisted living facility where you live or receive care cannot serve either, unless that person is your family, your cohabitant, or a descendant of your cohabitant.

Utah adds a protection worth knowing on the first point: advocating for withholding or withdrawing health care or mental health care is not, by itself, evidence that a person poses a danger to you. Someone who supports your wishes is not disqualified for saying so.

If you do not name an agent at all, Utah’s chapter has a default surrogate provision that steps in on its own, built around the same danger and facility restrictions as the agent rule above. Naming someone yourself, rather than leaving it to that default order, is how you make sure the person speaking for you is the one you actually chose.

When it takes effect

By default, your agent’s authority begins when you are found to lack the capacity to make your own health care decisions, either by a court or through Utah’s own capacity-finding process, and it ends again if you are later found to have capacity, or if you object to the finding that you lacked it. It resumes only if a court finds you lack capacity or a second, independent clinician confirms the first finding. Your power of attorney can instead say that your agent’s authority commences the moment you sign it, rather than waiting on a capacity finding.

There is no terminal-condition or two-physician certification gate, the shape many other states use for a living will. Utah’s default trigger is capacity alone. A health care instruction is different again: it operates on its own terms, and you can write it to take effect on any condition you specify, not only on incapacity.

If you are pregnant

Utah’s current law says nothing about pregnancy. The word does not appear anywhere across the Uniform Health Care Decisions Act’s 29 sections, or on its optional form. Your advance health care directive applies exactly as you wrote it, whether or not you are pregnant, with no automatic suspension and no clause for you to fill in either way.

This is a real change, not a gap in the record. Utah used to suspend a directive’s effect during pregnancy under a section captioned “Advance health care directive effect during pregnancy.” That section was repealed effective January 1, 2026, the same day the rest of the old Act gave way to the current chapter, and it was not replaced with anything.

Changing or cancelling it

You can revoke an agent’s appointment or a health care instruction at any time, by any act that clearly shows you mean to. Utah’s law names an oral statement to a health care professional as one example on its own, so you do not need a written revocation, a witness, or notice to your agent for it to count.

That right runs alongside your capacity, not forever regardless of it. If a court finds you lack capacity to revoke, or a capacity finding under Utah’s own process stands, that same finding is what limits your ability to change your directive on your own from that point forward. A later advance health care directive revokes an earlier one wherever the two conflict.

One more automatic rule: a petition for annulment, divorce, dissolution, legal separation or termination of your marriage revokes your spouse’s appointment as your agent once it has been filed and not dismissed or withdrawn, rather than only once a court issues a final decree, unless your directive says otherwise. A decree, a legal separation the two of you agree to in a record, and a spouse who has willfully deserted you for more than a year each have the same effect.

Making sure it is found

Utah does not run a state registry for advance health care directives. Neither the current chapter nor Utah’s medical-order law creates one. The practical route is the same one that works everywhere a registry does not exist: give a signed copy to your agent, your physician, and the hospital you are most likely to use, and keep the original somewhere your family knows to look.

Utah honors a directive made in another state through two independent routes. One is compliance with the law of the state your directive names, or, where your directive names none, the state you made it in. The other is compliance with Utah’s own chapter 9 rules. A directive good in your home state does not also have to clear Utah’s one-witness rule. Utah’s law also lets a health care provider treat a directive as genuine and still in effect without further inquiry, which is exactly what a copy in the provider’s own file is for.

This is not a POLST

Utah’s medical order program is the Order for Life Sustaining Treatment, created under Utah Code Title 26B, Chapter 2, Part 8. It is a different kind of document from your advance health care directive. An order for life sustaining treatment 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, care facility, home and ambulance, on a form the Department of Health and Human Services designates. Your advance health care directive is something you complete in advance, for a future you cannot yet see. Myend prepares the advance health care directive. It does not, and cannot, produce an Order for Life Sustaining Treatment, because that has to come from a treating clinician.

The two laws share a birthday. The same 2025 legislation that replaced Utah’s advance directive chapter also moved the Order for Life Sustaining Treatment provision into its current home in Title 26B, both effective January 1, 2026.

What is different about Utah

Utah rewrote this entire area of law on January 1, 2026, and came out with one of the lightest signing rules in the country.

Utah did not amend its advance directive law. It replaced the whole thing at once: the former Advance Health Care Directive Act is gone, and the Uniform Health Care Decisions Act took its place on January 1, 2026. Every citation on this page points to that current chapter.

What came out the other side is unusually light. One adult witness covers the power of attorney for health care, and no notary appears anywhere in the chapter. A health care instruction on its own needs neither a witness nor a writing at all; Utah lets you simply tell a health care professional what you want. The witness restrictions themselves are narrow, three items, rather than the long lists of relatives, heirs and beneficiaries some states carry. And a witness does not have to be in the room: real-time video counts as present, and even an audio-only call can, if the witness can vouch for who is signing.

Pregnancy is the clearest example of the reform’s effect. Utah used to pause a directive automatically during pregnancy. That rule was repealed the same day the new chapter took effect, and nothing replaced it, so a Utah directive now applies exactly as written regardless of pregnancy.

One structural choice is easy to miss: Utah ties an agent’s authority to a capacity finding by default, not to a terminal diagnosis or a certification by two physicians, the shape many other states use. You can still choose to have your agent’s authority start immediately upon signing instead, if that is what you want.

Common questions

Sources and review