Advanced planning

Christian Century, June 28, 2005

ADVANCED PLANNING: A living will may not have helped in the Terry Schiavo case. "If family members are angry and litigious, no legal document is going to keep them from going to court," according to the Harvard Health Letter (June; see also www.health.harvard.edu/LW).

Having a living will and designating a health care proxy are important, but they're for exceptional cases. Most of the time health care professionals and family members, using common sense and compassion, arrive at humane decisions about end-of-life issues without referring to those documents.