• Living Will: A statement of your wishes regarding the use of life-prolonging treatment when you (1) have a terminal condition; or (2) have an end-stage condition; or (3) are in a persistent vegetative state. Also, a Living Will provides for you to give instructions regarding organ donation. A Living Will may be a written witnessed document voluntarily made in accordance with state law. Also, it may be a witnessed oral (non-written) statement giving your verbal instructions concerning life-prolonging procedures.
  
  
• Advance Directive: A witnessed written document or oral statement in which instructions are given by you or in which your desires are stated regarding your health care. Examples of advance directives are a Living Will and a Designation of Health Care Surrogate.
  
  
• Surrogate: Any competent adult expressly designated by you to make health care decisions on your behalf when you are incapable of doing so.
  
  
• Incompetent or Incapacity: A condition where you are physically or mentally unable to communicate a willful and knowing health care decision.

ABA COMMISSION ON LAW AND AGING
Consumer’s Tool Kit for Health Care Advance Planning
www.abanet.org/aging/toolkit/home.html
AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION - If you are looking at this Tool Kit, you are either thinking of making a health care advance directive (such as a Living Will or Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care), or you may have already signed one. In either case, you should be aware that just having a written advance directive by itself does not ensure that your wishes will be understood and respected. Studies have shown that standard advance directive forms do little to influence end-of-life decisions without: 1) informed, thoughtful reflection about your wishes and values, and 2) personal communication between you and your likely decision-makers before a crisis occurs.

AGING WITH DIGNITY - Five Wishes
http://www.agingwithdignity.org/5wishes.html
The Five Wishes document helps you express how you want to be treated if you are seriously ill and unable to speak for yourself. It is unique among all other living will and health agent forms because it looks to all of a person's needs: medical, personal, emotional and spiritual. Five Wishes also encourages discussing your wishes with your family and physician

Why a Tool Kit?
Good advance planning for health care decisions is, in reality, a continuing conversation - about values, priorities, the meaning of one’s life, and quality of life. To help you in this process, this Tool Kit contains a variety of self-help worksheets, suggestions, and resources. There are 10 Tools in all, each clearly labeled and user-friendly. The Tool Kit does not create a formal advance directive for you. Instead, it helps you do the much harder job of discovering, clarifying, and communicating what is important to you in the face of serious illness.

Supporting Family Health Care Decisions- Laws in Other States
www.familydecisions.org/otherstates.html
Under the new law, people are considered to be incapacitated if one attending physician deems them unable to make informed decisions for their medical care. In effect, what can now occur under this law is that someone may become your health care decision maker by default for the rest of your life.