Kansas Advance Directive

A Kansas advance directive is not one document. Kansas runs health care planning through three separate acts: a living will under the natural death act, a named agent under a durable power of attorney for health care decisions, and a pre-hospital do not resuscitate directive. Each carries its own statutory form, its own signing rule and its own trigger.

Every rule below was read section by section at the Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes on September 8, 2026, and each section is cited where it appears. Read this page as a plain-language map of those three acts, then have a Kansas attorney draft or review what you sign. This is general information about Kansas law rather than advice about your situation.

One fact shapes everything else. Kansas has no default surrogate statute. No section ranks your spouse, then your adult children, then your parents, as the people who may speak for you. Sign nothing in Kansas and nobody holds statutory authority over your medical care, and the fallback is a district court rather than the nearest relative.

Three Documents, and Not One of Them Is Combined

The natural death act arrived first, by L. 1979, ch. 199, effective July 1, 1979. K.S.A. 65-28,101 states the legislature's finding that adult persons hold the right to control decisions about their own medical care. The health care agent followed ten years later by L. 1989, ch. 181, effective July 1, 1989. The do not resuscitate act came by L. 1994, ch. 143.

Kansas never merged them. The witness bars differ, the triggers differ, and the revocation rules differ. Copying a combined advance directive from a neighbouring state onto Kansas paper is the most common way this goes wrong.

Kansas Names Nobody for You

Most states pair an advance directive act with a family consent ladder. Kansas did not enact one. Read the catchline index of chapters 58, 59 and 65 and no section establishes a health care surrogate or a consent priority, and none of the three acts creates one internally.

K.S.A. 59-30,155(e)(1) goes past silence. No court, guardian or any person has authority to decide on behalf of an adult who is legally incapable of making health care decisions to withhold or withdraw life-saving or life-sustaining medical care, treatment, services or procedures, except on one of the two grounds that subsection lists. Subsection (d)(1) says the same thing about nutrition and hydration.

Do not read K.S.A. 59-30,149(a) as a surrogate list either. That section ranks who a judge considers when appointing a guardian for an adult, and it is authority nobody carries until a court order exists. The order runs: a guardian already acting for the respondent in another jurisdiction, a person the respondent nominated (including a nomination made in a power of attorney), an agent appointed by the respondent under a power of attorney for healthcare, a spouse, a family member or other individual who has shown special care and concern, and a person nominated by the spouse, adult child or other close family member. Under subsection (c) the court may decline a person with priority and appoint someone lower or with none at all.

Two things follow for a Kansas reader. The health care agent sits third in that order, above the spouse, so signing one shifts what a judge sees. And the route into court runs through the Kansas uniform guardianship, conservatorship and other protective arrangements act at K.S.A. 59-30,101 through 59-30,212, which replaced the former guardianship act on January 1, 2026. Where a full appointment is more than the situation calls for, K.S.A. 59-30,197(b)(1)(A) lets a court authorize or direct a particular medical treatment, or the refusal of one, as a protective arrangement instead of a guardianship. That is a one-decision order rather than a standing appointment. Kansas guardianship planning covers that court lane in full.

Signing a Kansas Living Will: Two Witnesses or a Notary

K.S.A. 65-28,103(a) sets four requirements, and the fourth is an either, not an and. Any adult person may execute a declaration directing the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures in a terminal condition, and the declaration shall be:

1. In writing.
2. Signed by you, or by another person in your presence and at your expressed direction.
3. Dated.
4. Either signed in the presence of two or more witnesses at least 18 years old who clear the bars below, or acknowledged before a notary public.

A notarized Kansas declaration carrying no witness signatures is validly executed. Dropping that or is the single most likely way to get Kansas wrong, and it turns a good document into one a family throws away.

A witness under K.S.A. 65-28,103(a)(4)(A) may not be the person who signed the declaration for you at your direction, related to you by blood or marriage, entitled to any portion of your estate under Kansas intestate succession or under your will or a codicil to it, or directly financially responsible for your medical care. The witness statement printed in the statutory form repeats each of those in the witness's own voice, and adds that the declarant has been personally known to the witness.

Notice what the bar leaves out. It does not exclude your attending physician, another health care provider, or an employee of the facility treating you, and it says nothing about adoption. The health care agent document adds both of those, so a witness who is fine on one Kansas document can be disqualified on the other.

The form at K.S.A. 65-28,103(c) is a shape a declaration has to follow closely rather than word for word, and it may add other directions of your own. Should one of those added directions be held invalid, the rest still stands, because the section makes the directions severable.

What the Living Will Actually Reaches

Terminal condition, and nothing wider. K.S.A. 65-28,102(e) defines a qualified patient as one who executed a declaration and who has been diagnosed and certified in writing as afflicted with a terminal condition by two physicians who have personally examined the patient, one of whom shall be the attending physician. Two doctors, both examinations, one certificate in writing.

K.S.A. 65-28,102(c) then narrows what may be withheld. A life-sustaining procedure is a medical procedure or intervention that, applied to a qualified patient, would serve only to prolong the dying process, and where in the attending physician's judgment death will occur whether or not it is used. The definition excludes the administration of medication and any medical procedure deemed necessary for comfort care or to alleviate pain. Comfort measures never sit inside the choice.

The act carries no persistently unconscious category and no end-stage condition category. A dementia, a severe stroke or a coma that is not terminal falls outside the declaration entirely. That gap is the strongest reason to sign the agent document as well, because the agent turns on impairment rather than on dying.

Two more sections keep the document honest while you can still speak. K.S.A. 65-28,105 tells an attending physician who has been notified of a declaration to take the necessary steps, without delay after diagnosing a terminal condition, for the written certification and confirmation that make you a qualified patient. A physician who fails to do that is deemed to have refused to comply. And under K.S.A. 65-28,106 the desires of a qualified patient supersede the effect of the declaration at all times, so a patient who can express a wish overrides the paper.

Pregnancy suspends the document outright. K.S.A. 65-28,103(a) provides that the declaration of a qualified patient diagnosed as pregnant by the attending physician shall have no effect during the course of the pregnancy. No gestational threshold appears, no viability test appears, and the form offers the declarant no way to write around it. The reach is narrow and often overstated: that sentence lives in the natural death act and touches the declaration only. Neither the health care agent sections nor the do not resuscitate act contains any pregnancy provision.

The Health Care Agent Is the Broader Document

Start with durability, because a Kansas document that misses it is not durable. K.S.A. 58-625 defines a durable power of attorney for health care decisions as one where the principal designates an agent in writing and the writing contains the words this power of attorney for health care decisions shall not be affected by subsequent disability or incapacity of the principal, or this power of attorney for health care decisions shall become effective upon the disability or incapacity of the principal, or similar words showing that intent.

K.S.A. 58-629(a) sets out three grants the document may convey:

• Consent, refusal of consent, or withdrawal of consent to any care, treatment, service or procedure to maintain, diagnose or treat a physical or mental condition, plus decisions about organ donation, autopsy and disposition of the body.
• All necessary arrangements at any hospital, psychiatric hospital or psychiatric treatment facility, hospice, nursing home or similar place, and the employment or discharge of health care personnel, from physicians and psychiatrists through nurses and therapists.
• Requesting, receiving and reviewing any information, spoken or written, about your personal affairs or physical or mental health, including medical and hospital records, and signing the releases needed to get it.

Those are conveyed rather than automatic. K.S.A. 58-629(b) limits the agent's powers to the extent set out in writing in the document, so a Kansas form that quietly drops the third item drops records access along with it.

The same subsection makes the document springing by default. No agent power is effective until the occurrence of the principal's impairment as determined by the principal's attending physician, unless the document itself says otherwise. That is one physician, against two for the living will, and no terminal condition anywhere in the test. The effective time election in the statutory form at K.S.A. 58-632 is how a principal chooses immediate effect instead.

K.S.A. 58-629(d) rules three groups out as agent: the treating health care provider, an employee of the treating health care provider, and an owner, director, officer or employee of a facility of the kind described in subsection (a)(2). Two exceptions bring people back in. A person related to the principal by blood, marriage or adoption may serve, and so may a member of the same community of persons bound by vows to a religious life who conduct or assist in religious services and regularly engage in religious, benevolent, charitable or educational work or in health care services.

Execution under K.S.A. 58-629(e) mirrors the living will and then widens the witness bar. The document is dated and signed in the presence of two witnesses at least 18 years old, none of whom may be the agent, related to the principal by blood, marriage or adoption, entitled to any portion of the principal's estate under intestate succession or under any will or codicil, or directly financially responsible for the principal's health care. Or it is acknowledged before a notary public. The execution block of the form repeats the choice in the same terms. Two additions over the living will bar catch people out: the agent is excluded by name, and adoption joins blood and marriage.

Two closing provisions are worth knowing. K.S.A. 58-629(f) says the death of the principal does not prohibit or invalidate acts of the agent in arranging organ donation, autopsy or disposition of the body, which is the one authority that outlives you. K.S.A. 58-629(g) shields anyone who in good faith acts under the document without knowledge of its invalidity.

Your Agent Cannot Cancel Your Living Will

This is the Kansas ordering rule that surprises people. K.S.A. 58-629(b) states that the powers of the agent shall not include the power to revoke or invalidate a previously existing declaration by the principal in accordance with the natural death act, and the limitations of authority block in the K.S.A. 58-632 form prints the same sentence. In Kansas the written instruction outranks the named person, which is the reverse of the assumption a reader carries in from a single-instrument state.

Two other rules sit above both documents. Your own desires supersede the declaration at all times under K.S.A. 65-28,106, and K.S.A. 58-629(c) gives the agent a duty to act consistent with your expressed desires.

A guardian cuts both ways. Under K.S.A. 58-627(a), where a court of the principal's domicile appoints a guardian charged with responsibility for the principal's person after the document was executed, that guardian holds the same power to revoke or amend it that the principal would have had. K.S.A. 59-30,155(c)(4)(B) then claws that back for the decision that matters most: where the adult executed the agent document before the appointment, never revoked it, and it contains any provision relevant to withholding or withdrawing life-saving or life-sustaining care, the guardian shall act as that document provides, even if the guardian has revoked or amended it under K.S.A. 58-627.

The counterweight to the guardian's revocation power is in the next subsection. K.S.A. 58-627(b) lets a principal nominate a conservator or guardian inside the agent document, and the court shall appoint in accordance with the most recent nomination except for good cause or disqualification.

A guardian who does act carries a standard rather than a free hand. K.S.A. 59-30,153(d) requires the decision the guardian reasonably believes the adult would make if able, weighing the adult's previous or current directions, preferences, opinions, cultural practices, religious beliefs, values and actions. Best interest under subsection (e) is the fallback, not the starting point. And K.S.A. 59-30,154(f)(2) tells a guardian making health care decisions to act in accordance with any declaration the adult made under the natural death act.

A Feeding Tube Needs Its Own Sentence

The natural death act is silent on artificially administered nutrition and hydration. It neither names them nor excludes them, and the only carve-out in K.S.A. 65-28,102(c) covers medication and comfort care.

The guardianship act is anything but silent. K.S.A. 59-30,155(d)(1) presumes that every adult under guardianship has directed the guardian to have health care providers supply nutrition or hydration or both to a degree sufficient to sustain life, and bars any court, guardian or person from deciding otherwise for an adult who is legally incapable of making health care decisions. Two exits exist:

1. The adult, while still legally capable, executed expressly and with informed consent a written directive authorizing the withholding or withdrawal of nutrition or hydration under the adult's current circumstances. The statute says such a directive includes a declaration or a durable power of attorney for health care decisions.
2. The adult's treating physician certifies in writing that supplying nutrition or hydration would hasten death, or that the adult would be incapable of digesting or absorbing it so that supplying it would not contribute to sustaining life.

The second exit does not run itself. K.S.A. 59-30,155(d)(2) requires a motion filed with the written certification, notice to the adult and any attorney representing the adult, a court-appointed attorney for the adult, a hearing within 72 hours or as soon after as the court is available, and a finding by clear and convincing evidence. Subsection (d)(3) adds an injunction that a spouse, parent, child, sibling, current health care provider, the guardian, the state protection and advocacy agency or a public official may bring, and while that case is pending the court must direct that nutrition or hydration be supplied, unless it determines that the ground for the injunction in paragraph (3)(A) applies.

Read all of that as a drafting instruction. A Kansas document meant to reach a feeding tube has to say so in its own words, in the document, before capacity is gone.

The DNR Directive Breaks Both Rules

K.S.A. 65-4943 asks for a writing, a signature by the declarant or by another person in the declarant's presence and at the declarant's expressed direction, a date, and one witness at least 18 years old. That witness may not be the person who signed for the declarant, related by blood or marriage, in line to inherit under intestate succession or a will or codicil, or directly financially responsible for the declarant's medical care. There is no notary alternative anywhere in the act.

The form at K.S.A. 65-4942 is headed PRE-HOSPITAL DNR REQUEST FORM, an advanced request to limit the scope of emergency medical care. It says on its face that the choice does not prevent other emergency medical care by pre-hospital care providers or medical care directed by a physician before death. K.S.A. 65-4941(a) defines cardiopulmonary resuscitation as chest compressions, assisted ventilations, intubation, defibrillation, administration of cardiotonic medications or another medical procedure intended to restart breathing or heart functioning. Do not describe this document as covering treatment generally, because by its own text it does not.

The form also carries an attending physician or physician assistant affirmation block, with a footnote that the signature is not required where the person named is a member of a church or religion that treats by spiritual means through prayer alone. The execution requirements in K.S.A. 65-4943 list writing, signature, date and one witness, and do not themselves make a physician's signature a condition of validity.

A DNR order is a different instrument. K.S.A. 65-4941(c) makes it an instruction by the physician or physician assistant responsible for your care while you are admitted to a medical care facility licensed under K.S.A. 65-429 or an adult care home licensed under K.S.A. 39-928. It is not something you sign. K.S.A. 65-4947 keeps such an order valid while you are moved between that facility and an adult care home unless the responsible physician rescinds it, which stops a transfer from quietly cancelling it.

A DNR identifier is the medallion or bracelet. K.S.A. 65-4941(e) describes it as inscribed to identify the patient and carrying the letters DNR or the statement do not resuscitate, distributed by an entity certified by the emergency medical services board. K.S.A. 65-4946 lets the board certify a distributor only where the identifier goes out under a properly executed directive and the distributor maintains a toll free staffed telephone line that may be called at any time to verify the patient's identity. K.S.A. 65-4944 extends the same good faith immunity to a provider relying on the order, the directive or the identifier.

Kansas has no POLST or MOLST statute. No Kansas act creates physician orders for life-sustaining treatment, and no agency is told to design such a form. The revisor prints an attorney general annotation under K.S.A. 65-4941 recording opinion 2015-1, that the Kansas-Missouri transportable physician orders for patient preferences form cannot override the statutory limits imposed on guardians under the act. A form circulating in Kansas practice is evidence of practice, not of a Kansas statute.

Revoking Any of the Three

K.S.A. 65-28,104(a) gives the declaration three routes, and a Kansan may use any of them at any time:

• Destruction. The document is obliterated, burnt, torn, or otherwise destroyed or defaced in a manner indicating intention to cancel.
• A written revocation signed and dated by you, or by a person acting at your direction.
• A spoken revocation, made in the presence of a witness 18 or older who signs and dates a writing confirming that the expression of intent was made. Spoken words alone do nothing here. The verbal revocation becomes effective on the attending physician's receipt of that writing, and the physician records the time, date and place of the notification in your medical record.

K.S.A. 65-28,104(b) protects anyone who fails to act on a revocation without actual knowledge of it, and K.S.A. 58-628 does the same for the agent document, where a voluntary revocation does not terminate the agency as to anyone who acts in good faith without actual knowledge.

The agent document prescribes no exclusive method. The K.S.A. 58-632 form revokes any earlier durable power of attorney for health care decisions by its own recital, and directs that it be revoked by an instrument in writing executed, witnessed or acknowledged in the same manner, or by another manner the principal writes in. That recital reaches earlier agent documents alone, never the declaration.

The DNR form at K.S.A. 65-4942 carries its own revocation provision, with a signature and date line, and tells the declarant that the directive may be revoked at any time.

Divorce is an open question in Kansas, and this page will not guess at it. K.S.A. 58-625 through 58-632 say nothing about divorce, annulment or separate maintenance. The separate Kansas power of attorney act does carry such a rule: K.S.A. 58-657(b)(3) terminates an attorney in fact's authority on the filing of an action for annulment, separate maintenance or divorce where the principal and the attorney in fact were married to each other, unless the document says otherwise. Whether that act reaches a health care agent is not stated in any section read here. K.S.A. 58-651(i) defines a power of attorney broadly with no health care carve-out, and K.S.A. 58-663 states the act's application without excluding health care. Treat it as unresolved, and after a divorce revoke and re-execute rather than resting on a rule that may not exist for this document. The Kansas power of attorney page covers the financial act on its own terms.

When a Doctor Will Not Follow It

K.S.A. 65-28,107(a) puts a transfer duty on the physician. An attending physician who refuses to comply with the declaration of a qualified patient shall effect the transfer of that patient to another physician, and failing both to comply and to effect the transfer constitutes unprofessional conduct as defined in K.S.A. 65-2837. K.S.A. 65-28,105 feeds the same duty from the other direction, because a physician who never gets the terminal condition certified is deemed to have refused.

Note the limit. Neither the health care agent sections nor the do not resuscitate act imposes any comparable duty to comply or to transfer. That duty belongs to the declaration.

Immunity runs three ways, one per act. K.S.A. 65-28,106 shields a physician, licensed health care professional, medical care facility or employee who in good faith and under reasonable medical standards withholds or withdraws life-sustaining procedures from a qualified patient under a declaration. K.S.A. 65-4944 does the same for cardiopulmonary resuscitation withheld under a DNR order, directive or identifier. K.S.A. 58-629(g) covers anyone acting in good faith under an agent document without knowledge of its invalidity.

The same section leans the other way on validity, which is what makes that immunity usable. K.S.A. 65-28,106 presumes a declaration executed under K.S.A. 65-28,103 to be valid where the qualified patient is incompetent at the time of the decision. It lets a physician or medical care facility presume, absent actual notice to the contrary, that whoever signed was of sound mind. And it states that having signed a declaration is not itself an indication of mental incompetency, with age alone no bar to a determination of competency. A relative who argues after the fact that you were not sharp enough to sign is arguing against the statute.

Tampering Is a Crime Under One Act Only

K.S.A. 65-28,107(b) makes it a class A person misdemeanor to willfully conceal, cancel, deface, obliterate or damage another person's declaration without that declarant's consent, or to falsify or forge a revocation of another's declaration.

K.S.A. 65-28,107(c) reaches further. Falsifying or forging another person's declaration, or willfully concealing or withholding personal knowledge of a revocation, with the intent to cause a withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures contrary to the declarant's wishes, and by that act directly causing the withholding and hastening death, is a severity level 7 person felony.

Both crimes live in the natural death act. Neither the health care agent sections nor the do not resuscitate act carries any criminal provision, so tampering with a Kansas health care power of attorney is not an offense under those acts.

K.S.A. 65-28,108 adds five construction rules that read like consumer protection. No physician, medical care facility or other health care provider, and no health care service plan, health maintenance organization, disability insurer, self-insured employee welfare benefit plan or nonprofit medical and hospital service corporation, may require anyone to execute a declaration as a condition of being insured for or receiving health care services. Making a declaration does not affect the sale, procurement or issuance of life insurance, and no life policy is impaired by a withholding or withdrawal from an insured qualified patient, whatever the policy says. Withholding or withdrawal under the act is not a suicide and not the crime of assisting suicide under K.S.A. 21-5407. Not signing a declaration creates no presumption at all about what you would have wanted. And subsection (d) makes the act cumulative, so it impairs no legal right or responsibility anyone otherwise holds to reach the same result in a lawful way. K.S.A. 65-28,109 closes the act by stating that nothing in it condones, authorizes or approves mercy killing.

Nobody Can Look It Up: Kansas Keeps No Registry

No Kansas statute creates a registry for declarations, health care powers of attorney or do not resuscitate directives, and no state agency is directed to maintain one. The nearest thing is operational rather than a register: the toll free line in K.S.A. 65-4946 verifies the identity of a patient wearing a DNR medallion, and stores no documents. Kansas does run a first person consent organ and tissue donor registry at K.S.A. 65-3225 and K.S.A. 65-3239, and that is an anatomical gift register, nothing more.

So delivery is entirely your job, and K.S.A. 65-28,103(b) says so. It is the declarant's responsibility to notify the attending physician that the declaration exists, and a physician so notified makes the declaration or a copy of it part of your medical records. Hand signed copies to your agent, your doctors and the hospital you would most likely use, and tell the people who would show up at the emergency room where the originals live.

A Document Signed in Another State

Kansas recognition is half present, and the missing half is the part people assume. K.S.A. 58-630 treats a durable power of attorney for health care decisions that was valid under the law of the state where the principal resided when it was signed as a document under the Kansas act, treats acts taken here under it as valid where they would be valid under Kansas law, and does the same for acts under a document signed while the principal lived in Kansas.

The natural death act and the do not resuscitate act contain no equivalent provision. Both were read in full and neither addresses an out-of-state instrument. Do not stretch K.S.A. 58-630 into a portability rule for Kansas advance directives generally. A new Kansas resident who moved with a living will should sign a Kansas declaration rather than assume the old one travels.

Older Kansas paperwork is grandfathered in two places. K.S.A. 58-631 leaves a durable power of attorney executed before July 1, 1989 that expressly authorized health care decisions unaffected by the 1989 act, and K.S.A. 65-4945 treats any DNR document or method adopted by a medical care facility, adult care home or emergency medical service before the DNR act as meeting the act's definition.

Notaries, Including Remote Ones

Both the declaration and the agent document accept a notary acknowledgment in place of witnesses, at K.S.A. 65-28,103(a)(4)(B) and K.S.A. 58-629(e)(2). Kansas adopted the revised uniform law on notarial acts at K.S.A. 53-5a01 through 53-5a31, effective January 1, 2022, and K.S.A. 53-5a15 lets a Kansas notary perform a notarial act for a remotely located individual using communication technology, subject to personal knowledge or a credible witness or two types of identity proofing, confirmation that the record before the notary is the same record, and an audio-visual recording kept at least ten years.

Whether a remotely notarized Kansas advance directive satisfies either of those two subsections is not stated in any section read here. Both facts are recorded and the interaction between them is left open on purpose. What is settled is that witnessing is never remote in Kansas under these sections: each one asks for a document signed in the presence of the witnesses.

Where This Sits in a Kansas Plan

Money and property run on a different act with a different signing rule, and the boundary is written into the code. K.S.A. 58-654(g)(2) bars any Kansas financial power of attorney from making, executing, modifying or revoking a natural death act declaration, a do not resuscitate directive, or a durable power of attorney for health care decisions on the principal's behalf. Health care needs its own paperwork, always.

For the rest of the planning set, including how these three documents sit beside a will and a trust, start at Kansas estate planning basics. If nobody was named and the family is heading for court, read Kansas guardianship planning before filing anything.

Everything on this page stops at death. Your declaration and your agent's medical authority both end there, an organ donation arrangement under K.S.A. 58-629(f) does not, and what happens next is laid out in the Kansas probate guide. The document that says who inherits is a separate one again, with its own execution rules at Kansas will requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Kansas have a single advance directive form?

No. Kansas keeps three separate acts and three separate documents. The living will, which the code calls a declaration, sits in the natural death act at K.S.A. 65-28,101 through 65-28,109. The health care agent sits in a durable power of attorney for health care decisions at K.S.A. 58-625 through 58-632. The pre-hospital do not resuscitate directive sits at K.S.A. 65-4941 through 65-4948. Each carries its own statutory form and its own signing rule, so a Kansan who wants both written instructions and a named decision maker signs two documents rather than one.

Does a Kansas living will have to be notarized?

No. K.S.A. 65-28,103(a)(4) offers a choice: the declaration is either signed in the presence of two or more qualifying witnesses at least 18 years old, or acknowledged before a notary public. That word or does real work. A notarized Kansas declaration carrying no witness signatures at all is validly executed, and so is a witnessed one that no notary ever saw. K.S.A. 58-629(e) gives the health care agent document the same either-or choice. Only the do not resuscitate directive lacks a notary route.

Who makes health care decisions in Kansas if I never signed anything?

Nobody, by statute. Kansas has no default surrogate or family consent law, so no section hands authority to a spouse, an adult child or a parent. K.S.A. 59-30,155(e)(1) goes past silence and says that no court, guardian or any person may decide to withhold or withdraw life-saving or life-sustaining medical care for an adult who is legally incapable of deciding, except on two listed grounds. The route to a decision maker is a district court guardianship, or a protective arrangement covering one treatment decision under K.S.A. 59-30,197(b)(1)(A).

Can my Kansas health care agent cancel my living will?

No, and Kansas is unusual here. K.S.A. 58-629(b) says the powers of the agent shall not include the power to revoke or invalidate a previously existing declaration made under the natural death act, and the limitations block of the statutory form at K.S.A. 58-632 repeats the same sentence. Your written instructions outrank the person you named. A reader arriving from a state with one combined instrument usually assumes the reverse.

Can a Kansas directive authorize stopping a feeding tube?

Only where the document says so in its own words. K.S.A. 59-30,155(d)(1) presumes that every adult under guardianship has directed that nutrition or hydration be supplied to a degree sufficient to sustain life, and bars any court, guardian or person from deciding otherwise. The first exit is a written directive, executed expressly and with informed consent while the adult was still legally capable, that authorizes withholding or withdrawal under the current circumstances. The second is a treating physician certification, and that one takes a motion, a court-appointed attorney for the adult, a hearing within 72 hours and clear and convincing evidence.

What happens to a Kansas living will during pregnancy?

K.S.A. 65-28,103(a) suspends it. The declaration of a qualified patient diagnosed as pregnant by the attending physician has no effect during the course of the pregnancy. The subsection names no gestational threshold, no viability test and no way for the declarant to opt out inside the form. Note the reach: the sentence sits in the natural death act and touches the declaration alone. Neither the health care agent sections nor the do not resuscitate act contains any pregnancy provision.

How many witnesses does a Kansas DNR directive need?

One, and there is no notary alternative. K.S.A. 65-4943 asks for writing, a signature by the declarant or by another person in the declarant's presence and at the declarant's expressed direction, a date, and one witness at least 18 years old who is not the signer, not related by blood or marriage, not in line to inherit, and not directly financially responsible for the declarant's medical care. The directive breaks from the other two Kansas documents in both directions: fewer witnesses, and no notary route.

Is an advance directive from another state good in Kansas?

Half of one is. K.S.A. 58-630 treats a durable power of attorney for health care decisions that was valid under the law of the state where the principal lived when it was signed as a Kansas document, and validates acts taken here that would be valid under Kansas law. The natural death act and the do not resuscitate act carry no matching provision, so a living will or a DNR directive signed elsewhere has no Kansas recognition statute behind it. New residents should sign fresh Kansas paperwork.

Related Guides

• Kansas Power of Attorney
• Kansas Guardianship Planning
• Kansas Estate Planning Basics
• Kansas Will Requirements
• Kansas Probate Guide

Sources:

• Title: K.S.A. 65-28,101, Withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures; legislative finding and declaration. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_028_0101.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-28,102, Same; definitions. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_028_0102.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-28,103, Same; declaration authorizing; effect during pregnancy of qualified patient; duty to notify attending physician; form of declaration; severability of directions. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_028_0103.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-28,104, Same; revocation of declaration. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_028_0104.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-28,105, Same; written certification and confirmation of declarant's terminal condition; effect of failure to comply. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_028_0105.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-28,106, Same; desires of qualified patient supersede declaration; presumptions relating to declaration; immunity from civil or criminal liability for persons acting pursuant to declaration. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_028_0106.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-28,107, Same; attending physician's refusal to comply with declaration of qualified patient; transfer of patient; unprofessional conduct; unlawful acts. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_028_0107.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-28,108, Same; construction and effect of act. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_028_0108.html
• Title: K.S.A. 58-625, Meaning of durable power of attorney for healthcare decisions. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch58/058_006_0025.html
• Title: K.S.A. 58-627, Power of court-appointed guardian; principal authorized to nominate conservator or guardian; court appointment. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch58/058_006_0027.html
• Title: K.S.A. 58-629, Authority of agent; limitations on agent's power; persons not to be designated as agents; witnesses and acknowledgment; effect of death of principal. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch58/058_006_0029.html
• Title: K.S.A. 58-630, Effect if valid under laws of state of principal's residence; acts by agent in this state. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch58/058_006_0030.html
• Title: K.S.A. 58-632, Form of durable power of attorney. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch58/058_006_0032.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-4941, Do not resuscitate orders or directives; definitions. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_049_0041.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-4942, Same; form. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_049_0042.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-4943, Same; requirements of form. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_049_0043.html
• Title: K.S.A. 65-4947, Same; validity of DNR order during transport of patient. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch65/065_049_0047.html
• Title: K.S.A. 59-30,149, Who may be guardian for adult; order of priority. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch59/059_030_0149.html
• Title: K.S.A. 59-30,155, Special limitations on powers of guardian for adult. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch59/059_030_0155.html
• Title: K.S.A. 59-30,197, Basis for protective arrangement instead of guardianship for adult. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch59/059_030_0197.html
• Title: K.S.A. 53-5a15, Notarial act performed for remotely located individual. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch53/053_005a_0015.html
• Title: K.S.A. 58-654, General powers. Publisher: Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Publication Date: 2025 compilation, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://www.ksrevisor.gov/statutes/chapters/ch58/058_006_0054.html
• Title: Statutes Repealed and Amended by the 2026 Legislature. Publisher: Kansas Secretary of State. Publication Date: 2026 session, accessed 2026-09-08. URL: https://sos.ks.gov/publications/sessionlaws/2026/2026-Amended-Repealed.html

It is not legal advice.