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Illinois law allows you to appoint someone to make your medical treatment decisions for you if you lose the ability to make your own decisions or to express them yourself. You can do this by using a "Power of Attorney for Health Care" where you designate the person (your “agent”) to make such decisions on your behalf. You can allow your health care agent to make all of your health care decisions while you cannot, or can limit their authority to only certain medical treatments. You may also give your agent instructions that he or she must follow. Your agent can then communicate your wishes to your health care professionals, who must follow your agent's decisions as if you were expressing them directly yourself.
It is important to note that you do NOT lose your ability to make your own health care and medical treatment decisions as long as you want to do so and are able to express them. Your agent’s ability to stand in your shoes only occurs when you are not able to express your own wishes.
While you can only name one agent at a time to make medical decisions for you, you can name “successor agents” who would serve, one at a time, as your agent in the order listed in the event your primary agent is unable or unwilling to serve.
In Illinois, if you do not have a validly signed Power of Attorney for Health Care and you become unable to express your own preferences about your medical care, there is a statute which lists other people who, in the order listed, have the authority to make your decisions for you. Some people do not like that list and prefer to make their own list in a Power of Attorney for Health Care, and to be more specific about what type of medical treatment and end of life decisions their agent can and cannot authorize for them.
Schening & Dopke Law, LLC is located in South Elgin, IL and serves clients throughout Kane, DuPage, DeKalb and Cook Counties and the surrounding areas.
