• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Legal Templates

Legal Templates
  • Business Forms
    Business & Contracts

    All of our legal contracts and documents are drafted and regularly updated by attorneys licensed in their respective jurisdictions, paralegals, or subject matter experts. Save your hard-earned money and time with Legal Templates.

    Top Business Forms
    Business Formation
    • Business Plan
    • LLC Operating Agreement
    • Articles of Incorporation
    • Corporate Bylaws
    • Buy-Sell Agreement
    Business Operations
    • Business Contract
    • Partnership Agreement
    • Non-Disclosure Agreement
    • Release of Liability
    • Letter of Intent
    Sales and Payments
    • Purchase Agreement
    • Sales Agreement
    • Invoice
    • Purchase Order
    • Business Purchase
    Employment and HR
    • Employment Contract
    • Employment Offer
    • Employment Verification
    • Freelance Contract
    • Non-Compete Agreement
    View All Business Forms
  • Real Estate Forms
    Real Estate

    All of our legal contracts and documents are drafted and regularly updated by attorneys licensed in their respective jurisdictions, paralegals, or subject matter experts. Save your hard-earned money and time with Legal Templates.

    Top Real Estate Forms
    Landlords
    • Lease Agreement
    • Property Management
    • Eviction Notice
    • Late Rent Notice
    • Lease Termination
    Tenants
    • Room Rental
    • Sublease Agreement
    • Roommate Agreement
    • Notice to Vacate
    • Early Lease Termination
    Home Ownership
    • Real Estate Purchase Agreement
    • Mortgage Deed
    • Quitclaim Deed
    • Deed of Trust
    • Moving Checklist
    View all Real Estate Forms
  • Personal & Family Forms
    Personal and Family

    All of our legal contracts and documents are drafted and regularly updated by attorneys licensed in their respective jurisdictions, paralegals, or subject matter experts. Save your hard-earned money and time with Legal Templates.

    Top Personal and Family Forms
    Estate Planning
    • Power of Attorney
    • Last Will & Testament
    • Living Will
    • Advance Directive
    • DNR Form
    Personal Finance
    • Bill of Sale
    • Loan Agreement
    • Purchase Agreement
    • Promissory Note
    • Sales Agreement
    Family Matters
    • Parenting Plan
    • Child Travel Consent
    • Divorce Agreement
    • Separation Agreement
    • Prenuptial Agreement
    Affidavits
    • General Affidavit
    • Gift Affidavit
    • Affidavit of Identity
    • Affidavit of Residence
    • Affidavit of Death
    View All Personal Forms
  • Support
    Resources
    • Business
    • Real Estate
    • Personal and Family
    • Financial
    • Estate Planning
    Support
    • About Us
    • Careers
    • Contact Us
    • All Legal Documents

    Monday - Friday | 9AM - 7PM EDT

    (855) 335-9779

  • Sign In
  • :email

Home Personal & Family Documents Advance Directive Maryland

Free Maryland Advance Directive

Use our Maryland Advance Directive form to declare your end-of-life wishes, and let someone make medical decisions for you if you become incapacitated.

Updated May 15, 2022 | Legally reviewed by Susan Chai, Esq.

A Maryland Advance Directive lets you make decisions about your medical treatment even if you’re unable to communicate those decisions yourself. By appointing someone as your agent and providing them clear guidelines in your advance directive, they can help you make choices you’d otherwise be unable to make in a medical emergency.

Table of Contents
  • What is a Maryland Advance Directive Form?
  • Who Should Have a Maryland Advance Directive?
  • How to Select Your Agent(s)
  • Decision-Making Power of Your Agent
  • What to Do if You Change Your Mind
  • How to Complete a Maryland Advance Directive

1. What is a Maryland Advance Directive Form?

As laid out in the Maryland Code, Health General Section 5-601, an Advance Directive is a document or oral statement that provides instructions about your healthcare. You can use it to appoint someone that you trust to make health care decisions on your behalf, in the event that you lose the ability to make such decisions yourself.

The instructions that you leave in your Advance Directive will inform health care providers, as well as your appointed health care agent, on how you wish to be medically treated following a debilitating event.

Putting together an MD Advance Directive will answer these important questions:

  • Who will carry out my medical wishes, in the event that I’m unable to communicate them?
  • If I can’t communicate my wishes, what types of treatment do I want – and not want – to receive?
  • As I’m being treated, will my religious, moral, or other beliefs be followed?

Below are a few key terms to keep in mind before executing a Advance Directive, as laid out in MD Health-Gen Code § 5-601:

  • Declarant: A competent adult who creates an Advance Directive in Maryland
  • Health Care Agent: An adult who you appoint in your Advance Directive to make health care decisions on your behalf. Health Care Agents can also simply be referred to as “agents.”
  • Health Care Provider: A person or facility licensed and authorized to provide health care to individuals.
  • Life-Sustaining Procedure: Any medical procedure, treatment, or intervention that uses mechanical or other artificial means to sustain vital bodily functions. This includes artificially administered hydration and nutrition, as well as resuscitation.
  • Terminal Condition: An incurable condition caused by injury, disease, or illness from which there can be no recovery.

Note that an Advance Directive is sometimes also referred to by other names, such as:

  • Health Care Power of Attorney
  • Medical Power of Attorney
  • Living Will
  • Health Care Directive

Before executing your Maryland advance directive, it’s important that you understand the difference between an advance directive and a living will.

2. Who Should Have a Maryland Advance Directive?

If you’re relatively young and/or healthy, you might wonder why you’d bother with a Health Care Directive. Sadly, unforeseen and debilitating medical events can strike at any age. It can be difficult to think about, but it’s important to think about how you would want to be treated in the event that you’re unable to communicate your medical wishes.

Such predicaments could include (but are not limited to):

  • Falling into a coma
  • Being in an indefinite vegetative state
  • Experiencing an unexpected, dire complication while under anesthesia

Should these or similar events occur, an MD Advance Directive will ensure that you’ll be treated according to your own wishes. This can also help alleviate the burden on your friends and family, by specifically outlining your desires.

3. How to Select Your Agent(s)

First and foremost, it’s important to choose someone that you trust deeply. Your agent must be willing and able to make potentially difficult decisions regarding your medical treatment.

Discuss your wants, values, fears, and preferences about your medical care with your prospective agent beforehand. The more your agent understands both yourself and your values, the more capable they will be of making decisions that you would have made.

Of course, this is a very personal choice. Make sure the person you choose understands what you’re asking and is willing to accept the responsibility.

Who can you select as your agent?

As specified in MD Health-Gen Code § 5-602, you may choose any competent adult age 18 or older as your agent, with certain restrictions (outlined below). Common choices include a spouse, domestic partner, adult child, parent, sibling, attorney or other fiduciary.

Who can you not select as your agent?

An owner, operator, or employee of a health care facility where you’re currently a patient cannot be your agent. This extends to any spouses, parents, children, or siblings of those owners, operators, or employees.

Additionally, if you have chosen a spouse as your agent, and either you or your spouse file for divorce or are legally separated, that spouse is disqualified as your agent, per MD Health-Gen Code § 5-602.

However, that former spouse may still remain as your agent if you are medically capable to make decisions on your own and have indicated an intent for them to continue to serve as your agent.

Can you have more than one agent?

Maryland allows you to choose a second person as an alternate agent, in case your first choice is unavailable, unable, or unwilling to act as your agent (MD Health-Gen Code § 5-603).

4. Decision-Making Power of Your Agent

What Health Care Decisions Can Your Agent  Make on Your Behalf?

Per MD Health-Gen Code § 5-605, your agent must follow any specific directions you include in your Advance Directive. While doing so, they must also consider:

  • Your current diagnosis and prognosis, with and without treatment
  • Any wishes you’ve expressed about providing, withholding, or withdrawing certain treatments
  • Your moral and religious beliefs
  • Your personal values
  • Your past behavior, attitudes, and conduct regarding the treatment at hand
  • Your past reactions to providing, withholding, or withdrawing similar treatments for another person
  • Any concerns you’ve expressed about the effect on family or intimate friends if the treatment were provided, withheld, or withdrawn

Additionally, an Advance Directive can empower your agent to use their own best judgment in certain circumstances. If your wishes regarding certain treatments are unknown and not specified in your Health Care Directive, the agent must take your best interest into account.

As far as the agent’s decisions go, the benefit of treatment to you must outweigh the burdens of that treatment, taking into consideration:

  • The effect of the treatment on your physical, emotional, and cognitive functions
  • The degree of physical pain or discomfort caused to you by providing, withholding, or withdrawing treatment
  • Your dignity
  • The effects on your life expectancy
  • The prognosis for your recovery
  • The potential risks, side effects, and benefits of providing or withholding treatment
  • Your religious beliefs and values, to the extent they help in determining your best interest

Therefore, taking all of the above into account, your agent can make decisions such as:

  • Whether to administer and/or remove life support
  • When to continue or discontinue treatments
  • What types of treatment will be allowed
  • Organ donation decisions

These are only a few examples of the choices that your agent may make for you.

What Health Care Decisions is Your Agent Unable to Make on Your Behalf?

MD Health-Gen Code § 5-605 makes it clear that your agent’s decisions cannot be based on a pre-existing, long-term mental or physical disability, or any economic disadvantage you (as the patient) might be suffering. In addition, the agent cannot authorize sterilization or treatment for mental disorders.

If you wish for your agent to also make non-healthcare-related decisions on your behalf, use a Maryland Power of Attorney form.

When is Your Agent Able to Begin Making Decisions on Your Behalf?

As stated in MD Health-Gen Code § 5-602, your agent can begin to make health care decisions once your attending doctor and a second physician certify, in writing, that you’re incapable of making informed decisions. At that time, any agent you’ve appointed in your Advance Directive can begin making decisions concerning your healthcare.

5. What to Do if You Change Your Mind

How Long is Your Maryland Advance Directive Effective?

In Maryland, your Health Care Directive is valid and enforceable as soon as it has been executed and will last as long as you’re alive given that you do not change or cancel it.

How Do I Revoke My Maryland Advance Directive?

MD Health-Gen Code § 5-610 states that you may cancel your Advance Directive at any time by:

  • Executing a signed and dated revocation, either electronically or in writing
  • Destroying or defacing your Advance Directive (such as crossing out the document)
  • Orally informing your doctor that you wish to revoke your Advance Directive
  • Executing another Maryland Advance Directive form

6. How to Complete a Maryland Advance Directive

To complete a Maryland Advance Directive, MD Health-Gen Code § 5-601 provides three options:

  • Sign and date a document indicating your health care wishes in the presence of two witnesses, who must be 18 years of age or older. The witnesses must sign the document. Note: The person you assign as your agent cannot be a witness.
  • File an electronic Advance Directive form, in accordance with certain signature requirements
  • Give an oral statement to your doctor in the presence of at least one witness. In Maryland, an oral Advance Directive must be documented in your medical record, dated and signed by the physician and the witness

Maryland does not require that a Health Care Directive be notarized.

What to do with Your Maryland Advance Directive

Once you’ve completed a written Advance Directive in Maryland, you should give copies to your doctor, your attorney, any trusted family, friends or acquaintances, and of course the agent themselves.

You may also want to keep a copy on your person, such as in a wallet or purse, as well as with stashed away with other important personal documents. Remember to bring a copy with you if you are admitted to the hospital, even for minor surgery or an outpatient procedure.

Related Will & Estate Planning Documents

  • Maryland Power of Attorney: A Maryland Power of Attorney is a written document that officially recognizes a legally binding relationship between two parties -- a Principal and an Agent....
  • Maryland Durable Power of Attorney: Create a durable power of attorney form in Maryland (MD) in order to allow someone to make decisions on your behalf.
  • Maryland Medical Power of Attorney: A Maryland Medical Power of Attorney allows you to name a healthcare agent, someone who will make health-related decisions for you if you cannot. Your...
  • DNR Form: States that you refuse resuscitation via CPR in the event that your heart stops beating or you stop breathing.
maryland advance directive

Free Maryland Advance Directive Form

Create Your Maryland Advance Directive in Minutes!

Legal Documents

  • All Legal Forms
  • Business Forms
  • Real Estate Forms
  • Personal and Family Forms

Popular Forms

  • Lease Agreements
  • Power of Attorney Forms
  • Eviction Notice
  • Living Will
  • Non-Disclosure Agreement

Resources

  • Legal Resources
  • Business
  • Real Estate
  • Personal & Family
  • Estate Planning
  • Financial
  • Covid-19 Resources

Company

  • Pricing
  • About Us
  • Careers
  • Contact Us
  • Partner With Us
  • Legal Dictionary

Users

  • Account
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
McAfee - Together is power.
Trustpilot
Legal Templates BBB Accredited Business

(855) 335-9779, Monday-Friday, 9AM - 7PM EDT

Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

Copyright 2023 Legal Templates LLC. Legal Templates LLC is not a lawyer, or a law firm and does not engage in the practice of law. Legal Templates cannot and does not provide legal advice or legal representation. All information, software and services provided on the site are for informational purposes and self-help only and are not intended to be a substitute for a lawyer or professional legal advice. Our legal contracts and documents are drafted and regularly updated by attorneys licensed in their respective jurisdictions, paralegals, or subject matter experts. Use of this site is subject to our Terms of Use. Legaltemplates.net is owned and operated by Resume Technologies Limited, London with offices in London United Kingdom.

Thank you for downloading one of our free legal templates!

Would you leave us a review?

We hope you've found what you need and are able to avoid the time, costs, and stress associated with dealing with a lawyer.

A review would mean the world to us (it only takes about 15 seconds).

Please check your download folder for MS Word or open tabs for PDF so you can access your FREE Legal Template Sample

Thanks again, and good luck!

Leave My Review