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How To Write A Living Will

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How To Write A Living Will

MyLivingWill™- Specify Your Health Care Advance Directives

We have removed the obstacles to writing a Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care.  It is convenient, low cost, and simple. The MyLivingWill™ service steps you through a series of questions in a "wizard" format.  It will ask you about your wishes regarding different types of treatment under different conditions, and allow you to set up your Advance Directives --- your Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care.  All questions are written in plain language, so you don't have to be a legal expert to create your own Advance Directives.  You simply answer the questions about your medical care wishes and we automatically and instantly format a document that forms the basis of a legal Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care, custom-made for your local jurisdiction.  If you live in Canada, the documents can then be printed and signed in front of witnesses to become legally binding documents.  There is also plenty of supplementary information to help answer all of your questions.

A Living Will gives you some say in the way you will be treated before you die, in a situation where death is otherwise inevitable.  This can be used in two ways --- to put a swift end to intolerable suffering, or to endorse the use of experimental treatment to try and save your life if at all possible.  Most people die in hospitals and often this is after receiving treatment administered in an effort to prolong a person's life.  Medical staff are duty bound to use everything within the powers of modern medicine to keep a patient alive as long as possible, and within those powers there are regulations to be followed.  Medical staff are obliged to preserve a patient's life without necessarily considering the financial or emotional concerns of the patient and loved ones.

A Power of Attorney for Health Care allows you to nominate a Healthcare Representative who can make health care decisions for you when you are incapacitated and unable to make decisions for yourself.  It can be used to complement your Living Will.

The most common use of a Living Will is to express your desire for a voluntary passive euthanasia.  Simply put, this means that medical staff should not artificially preserve your life under specific circumstances which are determined by you.  In addition, your Living Will or "healthcare directive" can express your views on the health care that you wish to receive if you were ever in a permanent coma.

Make unlimited updates free of charge.  Don't pay a lawyer every time you need to update your Advance Directives.  We allow your Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care to be kept securely online at LegalWills.ca so that you can make unlimited updates for as long as you are a member here.  Not only will you always have legal documents, but they will always be kept up to date.

You can still have it reviewed by a lawyer.  If you wish, we can arrange for your Advance Directives --- Living Will and Power of Attorney for Health Care --- to be reviewed by a lawyer, who will check the documents for consistency and completeness. (Currently not available in Ontario.)

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MyLivingWill™- Frequently Asked Questions

The MyLivingWill™ service steps you through a simple question and answer wizard, formats your answers into a readable format, allows you to store your information securely online and allows you to make unlimited updates.  You can then designate your own personal "Keyholders®", who with their unique ID can unlock your Advance Directives at the appropriate time.

The complete pricing structure is available on our Products & Prices page.

According to current laws in most jurisdictions, in order to be legal documents your Advance Directives must be signed in the presence of two witnesses. However, "electronic signature" laws are moving rapidly and we are closely monitoring these laws to support the future electronic notarization of documents, or even the electronic signature of your Advance Directives.  It is only a matter of time before this becomes standard practice in preparing legal documents.  According to today's laws you will need to print the Advance Directives you create with the MyLivingWill™ service and have them signed according to the laws in your area.  More details about this process are available on the help pages within the wizard. 

Although the unsigned versions of your Advance Directives stored online at LegalWills.ca are not legal documents, if you wish you can allow one or more of your designated Keyholders® to have access to the documents that you have created here at LegalWills.ca.  This could be important if your legally signed copies cannot be located.  In this situation, your LegalWills.ca documents can still provide some guidance to a loving family, as they can understand your wishes regarding your health care if you are unable to communicate these wishes yourself.

If properly signed according to the laws in your area, your Advance Directives are legal documents that cannot be over-ridden by your family.

Unlike a Will, a Living Will comes into effect before you die.  In particular, a Living Will comes into effect if you are mentally incapacitated (e.g. in a coma) or your death has become inevitable, and you are unable to express your wishes yourself.

It expresses any wishes you have for a right to die with dignity, or if you have some views on the health care that you wish to receive.

You can choose to have a 1-year, 10-year, 25-year or Life membership at LegalWills.ca, during which time you can make as many updates or amendments to your Advance Directives as you wish at no extra charge.  Details of the membership packages available can be found on our Products & Prices page.

Stepping through the question and answer wizard for the MyLivingWill™ service could take less than ten minutes, particularly if you are already comfortable with the decisions that you wish to make.  However, some questions may require some thought, and there are some issues that you may need to discuss with your family and loved ones. 

When working through the MyLivingWill™ service you do not have to complete the document in one sitting.  You can answer a couple of questions and then store these wishes securely online here at LegalWills.ca until you have a few more minutes to answer additional questions.  If you wish, you can spend many weeks or months making unlimited updates until you are happy with your final results, at which point you could have your final copy reviewed and signed.

All of your information stored at LegalWills.ca is safe and secure.  Your information is so highly encrypted that nobody has access to this information other than yourself and your trusted Keyholders using their randomly generated personal key.  Even the owners and administrators of LegalWills.ca are not able to access your information due to the software design and encryption methods used.

Note, however, that some services require temporary decryption of a member's documents as part of the operation of providing that service.  For example, if the member wants to have their Will reviewed by one of our legal professionals, or wants to have their documents printed and mailed to them, then the software will automatically decrypt these documents as part of the member's instructions to have these services performed.

All data passing from your computer to LegalWills.ca is authenticated and encrypted using 256-bit "SSL encryption".  This is the most advanced level of encryption available today, and it means that any information sent from your computer is scrambled in a way which makes it completely unintelligible if intercepted.  When you are on a secure section within the web site, a padlock will appear on your web browser.  This is your assurance that the encryption is in place and that you are communicating across a secure link.

Furthermore, LegalWills.ca uses an industry standard high security streaming-encryption algorithm known as "RSA" to encrypt all of your information before it is stored online.  To give you a feeling for the level of security provided by this encryption, it has been estimated that with the most efficient algorithms known to date, it would take a computer operating at 1 million instructions per second over 300 quintillion years (that's 3 with 20 zeros behind it!) to break the encryption. That's several trillion times longer than the age of the Earth.

All of our data is securely stored in a highly encrypted format on database servers. To protect against catastrophic data loss, daily backups are performed on each of our servers. Hence, if any one of our servers experienced technical difficulties, the data would not be at risk.

Furthermore, physical protection of our primary systems includes:

  • Fire detection and fire suppression systems with dry pipe pre-action sprinkler systems
  • N + 1 redundant power supplies, providing dual power feeds and backup batteries, water coolant systems and generators
  • N + 1 redundant climate control, providing primary and backup chiller units, cooling towers, and water storage
  • Local network operations center (NOC) for monitoring all data center operations
  • 24x7 monitoring and support of network connection and server availability
  • 24x7 uniformed guard service with interior and exterior closed-circuit television surveillance
  • Electronic access at all data center entrances, including biometric hand scanners
  • Electronic key management systems and individually keyed cabinets

As you can see, we take the security and privacy of all of our member information very seriously.

Services such as MyFuneral™, MyLifeLocker™, MyVault™, and MyMessages™ do not create legal documents and make no assumptions about your country of residence. 

We have worked extensively with lawyers in Canada to ensure that the legal documents created by the MyWill™, MyExpatWill™, MyPowerOfAttorney™ and MyLivingWill™ services are up to date with the laws in all of the provinces in Canada, including: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Québec, Saskatchewan, and Yukon.  Hence, our services can be used to generate legal documents in any Canadian Province or Territory.

If you have any doubts about the legal standing of any documents in your jurisdiction, feel free to seek legal counsel in your area to have your documents reviewed.

There is a considerable amount of information included in the on-line help of the MyLivingWill™   wizard.  This will answer most of the common questions regarding the steps included in creating your own Advance Directives. 

For information about the other services available, or about LegalWills.ca in general, you can browse this website or send an email to [email protected].  We will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

 

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