Health Care Planning - Juniper Law

Because the greatest risk isn’t death — it’s losing the ability to speak for yourself.

Some people plan for what happens when they die. Far fewer plan for what happens if they can’t make decisions for themselves while they’re still alive.

Incapacity — whether from an accident, a stroke, dementia, or any serious medical event — can happen to anyone at any age. When it does, someone will be making medical and financial decisions on your behalf. The only question is whether that person is someone you chose, guided by your own documented wishes — or someone a court appointed, working from nothing.

Health care planning answers that question before it becomes a crisis.

What Happens Without These Documents

The consequences of not having health care documents in place are immediate and serious:

A Court Appoints Your Decision-Maker

Without a Healthcare Power of Attorney, a judge — not you — chooses who speaks for you. That person may not be who you’d choose.

Your Family Is Left to Guess

Without a Living Will, your loved ones face agonizing decisions with no guidance from you. Disagreements between family members are common and painful.

Doctors Can’t Talk to Your Family

Without a HIPAA Authorization, medical providers may be legally prohibited from sharing information with even your closest loved ones.

These aren’t rare stories. Every year, families across Virginia face these situations because their loved ones never put the right documents in place. The conversations are harder and the outcomes are worse because of the lack of a plan.

The Four Documents Every Adult Needs

A complete health care plan includes four distinct documents. Each one addresses a different gap — and each one matters.

Healthcare Power of Attorney

Also called a Healthcare Proxy

This document names the person you trust to make medical decisions on your behalf when you cannot make them yourself. Without it, that authority defaults to state law or whoever a court appoints — which may not be the person you’d choose, and may not happen quickly enough to matter.

Your healthcare agent can consent to or refuse treatment, choose your care providers, and make decisions about your living situation if necessary. Choosing this person carefully — and making sure they understand your wishes — is one of the most important decisions in your estate plan.

Living Will / Advance Medical Directive

Your voice, even when you can’t speak

A Living Will documents your wishes for medical treatment in specific end-of-life scenarios — so your healthcare agent and family have real guidance when they need it most. It addresses questions like: Do you want life-sustaining treatment if there is no reasonable expectation of recovery? What are your wishes about artificial nutrition and hydration?

This document doesn’t just protect you — it protects your family. The most painful moments in a medical crisis often come when family members disagree about what their loved one would have wanted.

A Living Will removes that uncertainty and relieves your family of an impossible burden.

HIPAA Authorization

Giving your loved ones legal access to your information

Federal privacy law (HIPAA) prohibits medical providers from sharing your health information with anyone — including your spouse, your adult children, or your closest friends — without your written authorization. This can leave families completely in the dark during a medical emergency.

A HIPAA Authorization designates the specific people who are permitted to receive your medical information and communicate with your providers. It is a simple document with significant consequences when it’s missing.

Durable Financial Power of Attorney

Keeping your financial life running if you can’t manage it yourself

Incapacity doesn’t pause your bills, your mortgage, your taxes, or your financial obligations. A Durable Financial Power of Attorney authorizes a trusted person to manage your financial affairs on your behalf — paying bills, managing accounts, handling real estate transactions, and more.

Without this document, even a spouse may find themselves unable to access accounts or manage shared finances. A court-supervised conservatorship proceeding is the alternative — expensive, time-consuming, and entirely avoidable.

A Note for Parents of College-Age Children

This is one of the most overlooked areas of health care planning — and one of the most important.

The moment your child turns 18, you lose the automatic legal right to make medical decisions for them or access their health information. If your college student is in an accident or a medical emergency, you may find yourself unable to speak to their doctors, access their records, or make decisions on their behalf — regardless of the fact that you’re paying their tuition and they’re still on your insurance.

Every 18-year-old needs a Healthcare Power of Attorney, a Living Will, a HIPAA Authorization, and a Financial Power of Attorney. These documents are straightforward to prepare, inexpensive as a standalone package, and something most families never think to do until it’s too late.

If your child is heading to college — or has already left — this is a conversation worth having before they go back next semester.

How We Approach Health Care Planning

Health care documents are included in every estate plan we prepare. We don’t treat them as a footnote or an afterthought — we walk through each one carefully, making sure you understand what it does, who you’re naming, and what your documented wishes actually say.

The decisions involved — who speaks for you, what treatment you want, how much authority you’re granting — are deeply personal. We create the space to think through them without pressure, ask every question, and document your wishes accurately.

“She took as much time as needed to answer all of my questions and explore various possibilities for my situation. I truly felt this made the process so much better.”
— D.D., Juniper Law client

If you already have these documents but haven’t reviewed them recently, we also offer Estate Plan Checkups — a dedicated review to make sure your existing documents still reflect your wishes, still name the right people, and still work under current law.

Don’t Leave These Decisions to a Judge.

Schedule a free 15-minute call to talk through your situation and find out exactly what health care documents you need in place.

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