Indiana Healthcare Directive

Indiana folded its health care planning documents into one. Under the Health Care Advance Directives Act, IC 16-36-7, a single written advance directive names a health care representative to speak for you and records your treatment wishes. You sign it before two adult witnesses or a notary, whichever you prefer, and no official form is required.

Use this Indiana healthcare directive guide as a planning map, not as legal advice or a finished document. The right wording depends on your health, your family, and what you want. An Indiana estate planning attorney can confirm your documents say what you mean. This page connects to the Indiana probate and estate directory, the Indiana will requirements guide, and the Indiana estate planning basics guide for the rest of your plan.

What an Indiana Advance Directive Covers

Indiana rewrote this area of law in 2021. Public Law 50-2021 created the combined advance directive chapter, IC 16-36-7, effective July 1, 2021, and one declaration now handles jobs that once took several documents. In a single signed writing you can:

• Name one or more health care representatives to make medical decisions and receive your health information when you cannot decide for yourself (IC 16-36-7-28(a)).
• State your own decisions about particular treatments, plus your preferences about life prolonging procedures, palliative care, comfort care, and help with daily living.
• Disqualify people by name so they can never act as your representative or proxy.
• Fold in a living will declaration or an anatomical gift, so one document carries your whole set of health care instructions (IC 16-36-7-2).

You do not need a state form. The Indiana Department of Health keeps sample forms and resources on its website, and the statute says you may prepare a valid advance directive without any official or unofficial form (IC 16-36-7-30).

Choosing a Health Care Representative

Your representative steps into your shoes for medical decisions, so pick an adult you trust, ask before you name them, and add a backup. Once your treating physician determines you cannot decide, your representative's choice carries the same force as your own decision would (IC 16-36-7-35(c)). The representative can also examine and copy your health information, including mental health records, so treatment decisions rest on the same facts your doctors see (IC 16-36-7-39). Talk through your values first: faith, pain management, time on machines, and where you want to spend a final illness. The document can only echo conversations you actually had.

How to Sign It in Indiana

IC 16-36-7-28 gives you two signing routes, and you only need one:

• Two adult witnesses. Sign the directive in the presence of two adults, and at least one of the two cannot be your spouse or another relative (IC 16-36-7-28(c)(1)).
• A notary. Sign or acknowledge the directive before a notarial officer who completes a notarial certificate. Remote online notarization that complies with IC 33-42-17 also satisfies the rule (IC 16-36-7-28(c)(2)).

If another adult signs your name at your direction, that person cannot double as a witness, the notary, or a representative named in the document (IC 16-36-7-28(b)(2)). Extra witness signatures or an unneeded notary stamp do no harm. The chapter also allows electronic records and signatures, signing in separate paper counterparts combined into one document within ten business days, and telephone participation by the witnesses when being in the room is impossible or impractical, though a notary may not act by telephone (IC 16-36-7-28(d), (e)). A directive you signed in another state works in Indiana if it meets either the Indiana signing rules or the law of the place where you signed it (IC 16-36-7-28(j)).

When Your Representative Can Act

Indiana presumes you can make your own health care decisions, and while that stays true your choices control (IC 16-36-7-35(b)). If capacity comes into question, your treating physician evaluates you and, on concluding you cannot make decisions, enters that finding in your medical record (IC 16-36-7-35(d)). If the physician cannot reach a conclusion, providers keep treating you as able to decide (IC 16-36-7-35(e)). A hospitalization for mental illness or an intellectual disability does not by itself mean you lack capacity, and a capacity finding under this section settles nothing outside your medical care (IC 16-36-7-35(b), (g)).

Living Wills Under IC 16-36-4

The older Living Wills and Life Prolonging Procedures Act stays on the books, and you can still sign a stand-alone living will or build one into your advance directive. A living will declaration asks that life prolonging procedures be withheld or withdrawn once your condition is terminal and you cannot consent. It must track the statutory form in substance (IC 16-36-4-9, 16-36-4-10) and carries its own signing rule: at least two competent adult witnesses or a notary public (IC 16-36-4-8(b)(5), with the notary option added in 2023). A living will witness cannot be your parent, spouse, or child, cannot stand to inherit from you, and cannot be directly financially responsible for your medical care (IC 16-36-4-8(c)).

Three limits deserve attention before you rely on a living will alone:

1. It operates only after your attending physician certifies in writing that you have a terminal condition (IC 16-36-4-13).
2. It has no effect during pregnancy (IC 16-36-4-8(d)).
3. It counts as presumptive evidence of your wishes and gets great weight, but it does not by itself compel the physician to act (IC 16-36-4-8(f)). Its mirror image, the life prolonging procedures will, does bind the physician to use life prolonging treatment as requested (IC 16-36-4-8(g)).

The statutory living will form also makes you initial a separate choice about artificially supplied nutrition and hydration: receive it, decline it, or leave that call to your representative (IC 16-36-4-10). Read that section slowly before you initial anything.

The 2023 Cutoff for Older Documents

Indiana closed the old routes at the end of 2022, and the cutoff trips up people with aging paperwork. A stand-alone appointment of a health care representative under IC 16-36-1-7 is valid only if it was signed before January 1, 2023 (IC 16-36-1-7(b)(2)). A power of attorney can no longer carry health care powers either: health powers in a power of attorney executed after December 31, 2022 are void, while the money powers in the same document survive (IC 30-5-5-16(e)). Documents validly signed before those dates remain in force. If an old document and a newer advance directive materially conflict, the one you signed last controls (IC 16-36-7-44). Keep your Indiana power of attorney for financial matters, and put your medical wishes in an IC 16-36-7 advance directive.

If You Never Sign a Directive

Indiana fills the gap with a proxy ladder (IC 16-36-7-42(c)). When you cannot consent and no advance directive applies, or your named representative is unavailable, decisions pass to the first willing, able, and reasonably available person in a ten-step order: a court appointed guardian, then your spouse, adult child, parent, adult sibling, grandparent, adult grandchild, your nearest other adult relative, an adult friend who knows your health and beliefs, and finally your religious superior if you belong to a religious order. People who share a level and disagree decide by majority (IC 16-36-7-42(f)). The statute also strikes some people from the list, including a spouse in a pending divorce or legal separation and anyone under a protective order involving you (IC 16-36-7-43).

The ladder works, but it hands your care to a default ranking instead of your chosen person, and deadlocked relatives can end up asking a court to appoint a guardian. The Indiana guardianship planning guide covers what that court process involves and why signed documents usually make it unnecessary.

DNR and POST Orders

Two medical orders sit alongside the advance directive. An Out of Hospital DNR declaration and order tells emergency crews not to attempt resuscitation outside a hospital; only your attending physician, an advanced practice registered nurse, or a physician assistant may issue the order, and only for a person who has signed the declaration (IC 16-36-5-12). The POST form, short for Physician Order for Scope of Treatment, is a portable order for people with advanced illness, completed together with your treating physician, advanced practice registered nurse, or physician assistant (IC 16-36-6-7). A proxy deciding for you must attempt in good faith to comply with a valid POST form when making life prolonging decisions (IC 16-36-7-42(e)). Ask your doctor about both once an illness turns serious. They are medical orders, not planning papers you sign at the kitchen table.

Changing or Revoking It

An Indiana advance directive has no expiration date, and you keep control while you can communicate.

• Sign a new advance directive. The new document revokes the old one (IC 16-36-7-32(a)).
• Sign a written revocation with the same formalities as the original.
• Revoke orally in the direct physical presence of a health care provider. While you still have capacity, you can always revoke a spoken decision or stated preference this way, whatever the document says (IC 16-36-7-32(a)(3)).
• Revoke a living will by a signed and dated writing, by destroying the document, or by saying you intend to revoke it; the revocation takes hold once your attending physician learns of it (IC 16-36-4-12).

Your representative's actions stay valid until people actually know about a revocation, so replace old copies and tell your providers after any change (IC 16-36-7-32(b)).

A Simple Planning Sequence

Use this order as a starting checklist, then confirm the details with an Indiana attorney or your provider.

1. Choose your health care representative and a backup, and ask them before you name them.
2. Write out your treatment wishes, including life prolonging procedures and artificially supplied nutrition and hydration.
3. Decide whether to fold in a living will declaration or an anatomical gift.
4. Sign before two adult witnesses or a notary, and check the witness restrictions first.
5. Give signed copies to your representative, your doctor, and your hospital.
6. Review the document after a serious diagnosis, a marriage, a divorce, or a move, and replace old copies whenever your wishes change.

Pair these documents with the rest of your plan. The Indiana will requirements guide covers what makes a will valid, and the how to avoid probate in Indiana guide shows which assets pass outside court. For the full set of Indiana estate and probate pages, start at the Indiana estate directory.

This Indiana healthcare directive guide is general information about Indiana incapacity planning. The Health Care Advance Directives Act, the Living Wills and Life Prolonging Procedures Act, and the official Indiana Code control. Confirm anything that affects your situation with a licensed Indiana attorney.

Sources:

• Title: Ind. Code ch. 16-36-7, Health Care Advance Directives (execution IC 16-36-7-28; revocation IC 16-36-7-32; capacity IC 16-36-7-35; proxy IC 16-36-7-42; conflicts IC 16-36-7-44). Publisher: Indiana General Assembly, Indiana Code 2025. Publication Date: 2025 edition, accessed July 18, 2026. URL: https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/16#16-36-7
• Title: Ind. Code ch. 16-36-4, Living Wills and Life Prolonging Procedures (execution and witnesses IC 16-36-4-8; forms IC 16-36-4-10 and 16-36-4-11; revocation IC 16-36-4-12; qualified patient IC 16-36-4-13). Publisher: Indiana General Assembly, Indiana Code 2025. Publication Date: 2025 edition, accessed July 18, 2026. URL: https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/16#16-36-4
• Title: Ind. Code ch. 16-36-1, Health Care Consent (legacy health care representative appointment IC 16-36-1-7). Publisher: Indiana General Assembly, Indiana Code 2025. Publication Date: 2025 edition, accessed July 18, 2026. URL: https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/16#16-36-1
• Title: Ind. Code ch. 16-36-5, Out of Hospital Do Not Resuscitate Declarations (order issuance IC 16-36-5-12). Publisher: Indiana General Assembly, Indiana Code 2025. Publication Date: 2025 edition, accessed July 18, 2026. URL: https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/16#16-36-5
• Title: Ind. Code ch. 16-36-6, Physician Order for Scope of Treatment (completion IC 16-36-6-7). Publisher: Indiana General Assembly, Indiana Code 2025. Publication Date: 2025 edition, accessed July 18, 2026. URL: https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/16#16-36-6
• Title: Ind. Code IC 30-5-5-16, Health care powers under a power of attorney; no execution after December 31, 2022. Publisher: Indiana General Assembly, Indiana Code 2025. Publication Date: 2025 edition, accessed July 18, 2026. URL: https://iga.in.gov/laws/2025/ic/titles/30#30-5-5-16

It is not legal advice.