Hello everyone. It’s Chris, Pritt back again with a new topic in West Virginia divorce. Today, we’re going to be talking about whether you should be changing up any kind of medical powers of attorney or living wills if you were going through a divorce.
I’m talking about a situation where you have named your spouse on your living will or as your medical power of attorney. So let’s be clear about what those things are. Those are documents that will allow the person to make certain medical decisions on your behalf if you cannot make those decisions for yourself. So at our office, we draft what’s known as a combined medical power of attorney and living well. It talks about what you want to see happen in the event something happens it allows that person to make decisions for you when it comes to medical things.
One of the things that you need to know though, is that you must go ahead and get rid of that medical power of attorney living will if you were going through a divorce because you don’t want to have a situation where that person is making those sorts of decisions for you. You want someone in that position that your trust. It’s somebody who you want making those kinds of decisions for you to make sure it’s abundantly clear to the medical community what you’re wanting to do. It’s important to get those things changed up. It happens sometimes such that people will not change those things up and in the end, there are ways around it.
If it’s your former spouse, it’s going to be a red flag to people in the medical community. There are potential ways you can get around the fact that that person holds the medical power of attorney or the living will. However, it’s something that you want to avoid if at all possible. It would certainly be a cost for somebody to try to get involved with that. It might require an attorney to deal with that situation. You don’t want to be in a situation where somebody is having to take your spouse to court to deal with the medical power of attorney or living will that they should not have based on the circumstances. So, I think that’s a good summation of what you should do. Just remember when you’re going through a divorce and you have one of those It’s a pretty good idea to go ahead and get that redone.
That consists of today’s topic. If you have any questions at all, feel free to give us a call at (304) 720 4412 or email us at chris@prittlaw.com.
