Oregon Advance Directive

An Oregon advance directive is one document doing two jobs. It names a health care representative to speak for you, and it records your own instructions about treatment. Sign it, then add either two adult witnesses or a notary. Oregon asks for one route or the other, never both. The appointment starts working only when the person you named accepts it.

Read this page as a planning map for the paperwork. What treatment you want, and who should decide it, is a personal call, and a licensed Oregon attorney or your own clinician can confirm a document says what you mean before you sign it.

Two other Oregon documents sit beside this one. The money side of incapacity planning is the Oregon power of attorney, and ORS 127.005(6) keeps it out of health care in one sentence. The court route for someone who signed nothing is Oregon guardianship and conservatorship, and Oregon reverses the usual rule about which of those two wins.

Oregon Writes One Instrument, And It Is Not Called A Living Will

The phrase living will appears nowhere in ORS chapter 127. Neither does the word surrogate, and neither does health care proxy. Oregon uses its own vocabulary, and getting it wrong is the fastest way to hand a hospital a document that does not match the state's law.

• The person who signs is the principal.
• The person appointed is the health care representative. A backup is an alternate health care representative.
• The document is an advance directive, and ORS 127.505(2)(a) defines it as a document containing a form appointing a health care representative and instructions to that representative, together with any supplementary document or writing the principal attaches to it.

So the instruction half and the appointment half live in one instrument here. Oregon also publishes the appointment half on its own at ORS 127.527, for a person who wants to name a decision maker and write no instructions.

Only a capable adult may sign either form, under ORS 127.510(1) and (2)(a), and the person appointed must be a competent adult. ORS 127.505(1) defines an adult for this act as an individual who is 18 years of age or older, who has been adjudicated an emancipated minor, or who is a minor who is married. So 18 is the plain answer, with two carve-outs written into the definition itself. A minor cannot sign an Oregon advance directive and can still be a principal under one, because ORS 127.505(20)(b) counts "a person of any age who has a health care representative" as a principal.

The act itself is the Oregon Health Care Decisions Act, ORS 127.505 to 127.660 plus the penalty section ORS 127.995, and ORS 127.660 supplies that short title in a single sentence. Chapter 127 then carries five other regimes that readers routinely mix together: the financial power of attorney at ORS 127.002 to 127.045, the POLST registry at ORS 127.663 to 127.684, the nonopioid directive at ORS 127.690, the declaration for mental health treatment at ORS 127.700 to 127.737, and the Oregon Death with Dignity Act at ORS 127.800 to 127.897. Each has its own definitions, and two of them add a witness rule of their own.

Start from the sentence Oregon puts at the top of the act. ORS 127.507 reads, in full: "Capable adults may make their own health care decisions." Everything after it is about the moment you cannot.

Two Witnesses Or A Notary, And Only Two People Are Barred

Here is the execution rule most cross-state summaries flatten. ORS 127.515(2) reads that the form "must be signed and: (a) Witnessed and signed by at least two adults; or (b) Notarized by a notary public."

That is a real alternative. A notarized Oregon advance directive with zero witnesses satisfies the statute, and so does a witnessed one with no notary. The state form removes any doubt by printing COMPLETE EITHER A OR B WHEN YOU SIGN above a notary block and a witness block. The same rule governs both statutory forms, so the appointment-only form at ORS 127.527 is signed exactly the same way.

If you take the witness route, ORS 127.515(3) requires each witness to watch you sign, or to watch you acknowledge a signature already on the page. Acknowledging a document you signed earlier is expressly enough.

Now the part Oregon writes narrowly. ORS 127.515(4) disqualifies exactly two categories of witness, measured on the date the document is signed or acknowledged:

• your attending physician or attending health care provider; and
• the health care representative or alternate health care representative you appointed under ORS 127.510.

Read what is absent. Oregon bars no relative by blood, marriage or adoption. It bars no heir and nobody entitled to a share of your estate. It bars no owner, operator or employee of the facility where you are a patient. Your spouse or your adult child may witness your Oregon advance directive, so long as that person is not the one you named and is not treating you.

One condition rides on the witness route alone. Under ORS 127.515(5), if you are a patient in a long term care facility when the document is executed, one of the two witnesses must be an individual designated by that facility and qualified as the Department of Human Services specifies by rule. Choosing the notary instead avoids that step.

Chapter 127 Holds Three Different Witness Rules

This is where borrowed copy fails, because the three rules sit within a few pages of each other and none of them is "the Oregon witness rule."

Line up witnesses per document rather than once.

The Signature Is Not The Last Step. Acceptance Is.

This is the single most missed step in Oregon, and both statutory forms warn about it on their face: "Your appointment of a health care representative is not effective until the health care representative accepts the appointment."

ORS 127.510(2)(d) makes the appointment effective when it is accepted. ORS 127.525(1) gives two ways to accept: signing the acceptance block on the form, or representing to a third party that the person has accepted the authority and duties of a health care representative under an advance directive naming them. A signed, properly witnessed Oregon advance directive with an empty acceptance block names nobody.

Acceptance also creates a duty, and a way out of it. Under ORS 127.525(3), a representative or alternate may withdraw by giving notice to the principal until the principal becomes incapable, and by giving notice to the health care provider after that.

Oregon appoints in sequence rather than jointly. ORS 127.510(2)(b) lets you name one or more alternate health care representatives who hold the same rights and act when you are incapable and the first choice is unable, unwilling or unavailable. Subsection (2)(c) even defines unavailable: the representative is not available to answer questions for the provider in person, by telephone or by another means of direct communication. The words coagent and co-agent appear nowhere in chapter 127, and no section provides for two representatives acting jointly, so Oregon's structure is one representative at a time with alternates queued behind.

The Form Lives In The Statute, And It Has Moved Three Times

Oregon does not let an agency rewrite the advance directive. The whole form is printed in the code at ORS 127.529, and only the Legislative Assembly can change it. The section opens: "An advance directive executed by an Oregon resident or by a resident of any other state while physically present in this state must be in substantially the following form."

That standard is stricter than a state offering a sample. A hospital form or a form from a national website works in Oregon only if it is substantially the ORS 127.529 form. The Oregon Health Authority says the same thing in plain words on its Advance Directive Forms page: "You do not have to use these specific forms, but any form you use must be substantially the same."

The form's history explains a lot of stale Oregon material still circulating:

House Bill 4135 restructured the act, and its substantive parts became operative on January 1, 2019. Senate Bill 199 then wrote the form now in use, took effect September 25, 2021, and the Oregon Health Authority states on its own forms page that the published PDFs are copied from it.

Old paperwork survives all of that. ORS 127.658 grandfathers a document by its own execution date. Neither the act as enacted, nor the repeal of any statute that was part of it, nor later amendments impair or supersede an advance directive, a form appointing a health care representative, or an older "directive to physicians" executed in accordance with the law in effect when it was signed. A directive executed before, on or after January 1, 2019 is governed by the statute in effect on its execution date. So a 2014 Oregon directive still speaks. A new document signed today should follow ORS 127.529, because that is the form the current section requires.

What the current form asks you to do runs in seven numbered sections. Sections 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7 handle the appointment, the signature, the witness or notary block and the acceptance. Sections 3 and 4 are the instructions, and section 3 asks you to initial one option in each of three named clinical situations: a terminal condition, an advanced progressive illness, and a permanent loss of consciousness. Each situation offers the same four choices, running from all available treatments, to feeding tubes and IV fluids only, to comfort care and a natural death, to leaving the call with your representative. Section 3B then asks what matters most to you, and section 4 invites your values, a preferred place of care and any documents you want attached. Anything you attach becomes part of the directive.

Where To Get The Oregon Form

ORS 127.533 requires the Oregon Health Authority to post the ORS 127.529 form and written explanatory materials on its website, so the agency page is a statutory duty rather than a courtesy. ORS 127.532 seats a thirteen-member Advance Directive Advisory Committee inside the authority's public health division. Its duties sit in the next section: ORS 127.533(1)(a) has the committee advise the Legislative Assembly on the form, and ORS 127.533(1)(b) has it review the ORS 127.529 form not less than once every four years.

The authority publishes the advance directive in English, Spanish and more than fifteen other languages, plus a large-print version. The English advance directive prints its own number in the footer, OHA 3905, revised January 4, 2022, and the companion booklet is OHA 3942, "Your Guide to the Oregon Advance Directive for Health Care." The stand-alone appointment form is published in English and Spanish and carries no agency form number at all, so treat any number you see attached to it with suspicion. Take the links from the authority's forms page rather than copying a URL from elsewhere, because the translated files are served from two different state hosts.

What Your Representative Can Decide, And What Nobody Can

ORS 127.535(1) grants the authority plainly: a health care representative "has the authority over the principal's health care that the principal would have if the principal were not incapable," subject to the limits of the appointment and to ORS 127.540 and 127.580. A representative known to the provider to be available has priority over any person other than the principal. Authority exists only while the principal is incapable.

Four decisions are off the table for an appointed representative, full stop. ORS 127.540(1) to (4) withholds convulsive treatment, psychosurgery, sterilization and abortion.

Two more are conditional, and this is the part worth planning around:

1. Life-sustaining procedures. Under ORS 127.540(5), a representative may withhold or withdraw them only if the appointment gave that authority, or the principal has been medically confirmed to be in a terminal condition, permanently unconscious, in a condition where the procedures would not benefit the medical condition and would cause permanent and severe pain, or in the advanced stages of a progressive fatal illness with the loss of function the statute lists. If you want your representative able to act outside those four states, grant that authority in the document.
2. Tube feeding. ORS 127.540(6) withholds authority over artificially administered nutrition and hydration, other than hyperalimentation, necessary to sustain life, except as ORS 127.580 allows.

ORS 127.580(1) then starts from a presumption that runs the other way from the rest of the act: every person who is temporarily or permanently incapable "has consented to artificially administered nutrition and hydration ... necessary to sustain life," unless one of six circumstances applies. The six are a clear refusal you stated while capable, medical infeasibility or severe intractable pain, a representative expressly given authority over tube feeding, permanent unconsciousness, a terminal condition, and an advanced fatal illness with the loss of function the section lists. Under ORS 127.580(3), the medical conditions in four of those six (paragraphs (b), (d), (e) and (f)) must be medically confirmed before the presumption falls. Leave tube feeding unaddressed in your Oregon document and the default is that you consented to it.

Two definitions carry more weight than their length suggests. "Medically confirmed" in ORS 127.505(17) means the attending clinician's opinion has been confirmed by a second physician or health care provider who has examined the patient and holds clinical privileges or expert knowledge of the condition being confirmed. And "permanently unconscious" in ORS 127.505(18) builds the confirming clinician into the term itself: the condition must be medically confirmed by a neurological specialist who is an expert in the examination of unresponsive individuals. Oregon also counts a naturopathic physician licensed by the Oregon Board of Naturopathic Medicine as a physician for this act, which is unusual and easy to get wrong.

Three more rules sit on the representative:

• Your objection wins. ORS 127.535(5) says the act does not authorize a representative or a provider to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining procedures or tube feeding if the principal manifests an objection, and that the provider "shall proceed as though the principal is capable with respect to the health care decision." A finding of incapacity does not license overriding a present objection, and ORS 127.555(5) carves that same exception out of the provider's immunity.
• Substituted judgment first. ORS 127.535(4) requires the representative to act consistently with your desires as expressed in the directive or otherwise made known. Best interests is the fallback, available only when your preferences are unknown.
• No personal bill, and full records access. ORS 127.535(2) makes clear the representative is not personally responsible for the cost of your care, and ORS 127.535(3) and (7) give the representative the same right you have to receive information and review records, and name the representative a personal representative for HIPAA purposes under 45 C.F.R. parts 160 and 164.

A defective document is not simply void. ORS 127.535(6) provides that an advance directive or appointment form that would be valid except that it is expired, is not properly witnessed or otherwise fails the formal requirements "shall constitute evidence of the patient's desires and interests."

One decision cannot be delegated to anyone. ORS 127.805(1) allows only the patient to request medication under the Death with Dignity Act, and ORS 127.810(1) requires the written request to be signed and dated by the patient. No Oregon health care representative can make that request for you.

Sign Nothing, And Oregon Runs A Gated Seven-Class List

Most states publish a default surrogate ladder that turns on whenever a patient cannot decide. Oregon's list does less than that, and the gate is the part to read first.

ORS 127.635(1) opens the list only for a principal who is incapable, has no appointed health care representative and no applicable valid advance directive, and has been medically confirmed to be in one of four conditions: a terminal condition, permanently unconscious, a condition where life-sustaining procedures would not benefit the medical condition and would cause permanent and severe pain, or the advanced stage of a progressive fatal illness with the listed loss of function. Oregon's own statutory form states the limit to the reader: the person appointed from the list "can only decide to withhold or withdraw life sustaining treatments if you meet one of the conditions set forth in ORS 127.635 (1)."

Inside that gate, ORS 127.635(2) ranks seven classes. Your representative is the first person in the order who can be located on reasonable effort by the health care facility and who is willing to serve:

1. A guardian of the principal who is authorized to make health care decisions, if any
2. The principal's spouse
3. An adult designated by the others listed in the subsection who can be located, if no listed person objects to the designation
4. A majority of the adult children of the principal who can be located
5. Either parent of the principal
6. A majority of the adult siblings of the principal who can be located with reasonable effort
7. Any adult relative or adult friend

Two features of that list surprise people. Class three has no counterpart in most states: the others on the list may agree on someone, and that agreed adult ranks above the adult children. Any objection from anyone on the list defeats the designation. And the group classes are inconsistent by design. Children act by a majority of those who can be located, siblings by a majority located with reasonable effort, while the parent class is "either parent" with no majority requirement at all.

Acting is not automatic once someone is selected. ORS 127.635(4) permits a withholding or withdrawal, including an election for hospice treatment, only after that person has consulted with concerned family and close friends and, if the principal has a case manager as defined by Department of Human Services rule, has given the case manager notice. The case manager must then hand over any information held about the principal's values, beliefs and preferences. ORS 127.635(5) adds a further step for a principal with an intellectual or developmental disability: the designated person must contact the department to find out whether a case manager exists and give that notice.

If nobody on the list is available, ORS 127.635(3) lets life-sustaining procedures be withheld or withdrawn on the direction and under the supervision of the attending physician or attending health care provider. Oregon leaves an unrepresented patient with a route, and the route is a clinician rather than a court.

You can also close the list against a particular person. ORS 127.520(3) lets a capable adult disqualify any other person from making health care decisions, in a writing signed by the adult that names each person disqualified. A provider with actual knowledge of the disqualification may not accept a decision from that person. ORS 127.520(1)(a) separately bars two groups from serving as your representative when they are unrelated to you by blood, marriage or adoption: your attending physician or attending health care provider and their employees, and the owners, operators and employees of a facility where you are a patient or resident. The facility bar alone carries an exception, for a representative appointed before you were admitted.

Oregon Puts The Representative Above A Guardian

This is the strongest planning fact in the state, and it is the one most often reported backwards.

ORS 127.545(5)(b)(A): unless the appointment form provides otherwise, a valid appointment of a health care representative or alternate under ORS 127.510 supersedes "any power of a guardian or other person appointed by a court to make health care decisions for the protected person," and supersedes any other prior appointment or designation.

Most states run the other way and let a guardianship displace the agent. Oregon does not, so signing an appointment now keeps the health care decision out of a later protective proceeding. The reversal covers an appointed representative. Where you appointed nobody and the default list runs, a guardian authorized to make health care decisions is class one on that list, which is the reading that makes both sections fit together.

If somebody does have to go to court, ORS 127.550 supplies one petition covering nine questions, from whether the principal is incapable, to whether an appointment is valid, suspended, reinstated, revoked or terminated, to disqualifying a representative who has violated or cannot perform the ORS 127.535(4) duties. The principal, a representative, a spouse, parent, sibling or adult child, an adult relative or friend familiar with the principal's desires, a guardian, a conservator, or the attending clinician may file. Venue is the circuit court in the county where the principal resides or is located, and the question may ride along inside an ORS chapter 125 protective proceeding. Short of that, ORS 127.550(1) says a decision made by a person authorized under the act "is effective immediately and does not require judicial approval."

Revoking, Suspending And Reinstating

Oregon splits revocation by subject matter, and the split favors the patient.

• Anything touching life support or tube feeding. ORS 127.545(1)(a) allows revocation "at any time and in any manner by which the principal is able to communicate the intent to revoke." Capacity is not a condition on that route.
• Everything else. ORS 127.545(1)(b) allows revocation at any time and in any manner by a capable principal.

Revocation takes effect on communication to your attending physician, attending health care provider or health care representative. If you tell the representative and you are incapable and under the care of a provider the representative knows about, ORS 127.545(2) requires the representative to inform the attending clinician promptly, and subsection (3) requires the clinician to put the revocation in your medical record.

Signing a new document does its own work. Unless the document says otherwise, ORS 127.545(4) makes a new advance directive revoke any prior advance directive and supersede directions in a previous court appointment or advance directive and any prior inconsistent expression of preferences. A new appointment form revokes any prior appointment form.

Two automatic suspensions run without any act by you, under ORS 127.545(5)(c). An appointment form is suspended if the representative and all alternates have withdrawn, and it is suspended if the form names your spouse and a petition for dissolution or annulment of marriage is filed and you do not reaffirm the appointment after the filing. Notice the trigger is the filing, not the judgment.

Coming back takes paper. ORS 127.545(7): "Any reinstatement of an advance directive or a form appointing a health care representative must be in writing."

Two more rules on the document's life span. Under ORS 127.510(3), unless the document limits its own term, it runs until you die or it is revoked, suspended or superseded. Under subsection (4), if you set a term and you are incapable when it expires, the document keeps working anyway until you are no longer incapable, you die, or it is revoked. A self-limited Oregon directive cannot lapse out from under you. And ORS 127.510(6) keeps one thing alive past death: the directive remains in effect with respect to an anatomical gift as defined in ORS 97.953.

POLST Is A Medical Order, Not An Advance Directive

An advance directive is a plan you write. A POLST is a present clinical order, and Oregon gives it its own act, its own definitions and a statewide registry.

ORS 127.663(7) defines a POLST as a physician order for life-sustaining treatment signed by a physician, naturopathic physician, nurse practitioner or physician associate. The statutory advance directive form warns the signer directly: "The Advance Directive form allows you to express your preferences for health care. It is not the same as Portable Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment (POLST) as defined in ORS 127.663."

ORS 127.666 directs the Oregon Health Authority to establish and operate a statewide registry collecting and disseminating POLST forms, and to adopt rules requiring submission of each POLST, each revised POLST and notice of any known revocation, unless the patient has requested to opt out. Registry information that identifies a patient, provider or facility is confidential under ORS 127.678 and is not subject to civil or administrative subpoena or to discovery in a civil action.

Two limits belong beside that. ORS 127.672 provides that nothing requires an individual to have a POLST or requires a health professional to authorize or execute one, and that a POLST may be revoked at any time. ORS 127.669 says the authority is not required to prescribe the form or its content, to disseminate forms, to educate the public about POLSTs generally, or to train providers about them. That division of labor is why the Oregon POLST form is not published from the same place as the advance directive. No official state page for the POLST registry was reachable on August 25, 2026, so this guide cites the statute rather than pointing at a URL that no longer resolves. Ask your own clinician for the current form.

One more narrow instrument arrived recently. ORS 127.690, created by House Bill 3211 and operative January 1, 2026, sets up a nonopioid directive: a form telling providers and emergency medical services providers that the individual may not be administered an opioid or offered a prescription for one, subject to the exceptions the section lists. You, your health care representative or a health care advocate may execute it, no one may be required to sign it as a condition of receiving care, and a provider handed one must make it part of your medical record. The Oregon Health Authority publishes that form electronically on its website.

Mental Health Treatment Gets Its Own Document

ORS 127.700 to 127.737 creates the declaration for mental health treatment, which an adult of sound mind may sign. ORS 127.700(7) limits its subject matter to convulsive treatment, treatment of mental illness with psychoactive medication, admission to and retention in a health care facility for care of mental illness, and outpatient services.

Four differences from the advance directive decide whether a reader needs both documents.

• It expires. ORS 127.702(2) runs a declaration for three years or until revoked. If it has been invoked and is in effect at the three-year mark, it stays effective until the principal is no longer incapable. The advance directive has no comparable term.
• Its witness bar is far wider. ORS 127.707(3) excludes the attending clinician and relatives of that clinician, owners and operators of the facility and their relatives, anyone related to the principal by blood, marriage or adoption, and the named attorney-in-fact. Merging this rule with ORS 127.515 is the single most common Oregon drafting error.
• The person named is called something else. ORS 127.705 uses attorney-in-fact, and that person must have accepted the appointment in writing before acting, which the advance directive's acceptance rule does not require.
• Incapacity is decided differently. ORS 127.711(1)(b) requires either a court determination or the professional opinions of two individuals, each a licensed independent practitioner as defined in ORS 426.005 or a licensed psychologist. The advance directive turns on one attending clinician's opinion.

The declaration becomes operative when it is delivered to your physician or other provider, under ORS 127.710, and the provider must act in accordance with it once you are found incapable while continuing to obtain your own informed consent whenever you are capable. Revocation is narrower than the advance directive's: ORS 127.722(1) allows it at any time if the principal is not incapable. And where the two documents conflict, ORS 127.545(6)(b) makes the declaration govern.

What Providers And Facilities Owe You

A handful of duties in the act change what actually happens at a bedside.

Nobody has to follow a document they never received. ORS 127.575 opens with it: "A health care provider has no duty to give effect to any instrument unless the provider has received a copy of the instrument." The same section entitles providers to assume a facially compliant advance directive is valid and enforceable unless they have notice of a suspension, reinstatement, revocation, superseding document, disqualification, withdrawal, dispute or other legal infirmity. Delivery is the step that makes your document work.

Facilities must hand you the materials. ORS 127.649 requires home health agencies, hospice programs, hospitals, long term care facilities and participating health maintenance organizations to maintain written policies for giving each capable adult, in writing and without recommendation, information on the right to accept or refuse treatment and to sign an advance directive or appointment form, the organization's own policies for carrying those rights out, the materials needed to execute one, and the name of a person who can answer questions. They must also document in a prominent place in your medical record whether you have signed one. ORS 127.652 sets the clock: hospitals and long term care facilities within five days of admission and before discharge, home health agencies and hospice programs within fifteen days of the first provision of care.

A provider may decline, and then must act. ORS 127.625(1) puts no provider under a duty to participate in withdrawing or withholding life-sustaining procedures or tube feeding. Subsection (2) then requires an unwilling provider to notify the representative promptly. If the representative's authority or decision is disputed, either may seek the court's guidance under ORS 127.550. If it is not disputed, the representative must make a reasonable effort to transfer the principal to another provider. Where an incapable patient has no representative and the decisions are not disputed, the provider must, without abandoning the patient, either discharge the patient or make a reasonable effort to locate another provider and authorize the transfer.

Comfort care never stops. ORS 127.642 requires everyone caring for a principal from whom life-sustaining procedures or tube feeding are withheld or withdrawn to keep up oral and body hygiene, make reasonable efforts to offer food and fluids by mouth, and supply medication, positioning, warmth and lighting that relieve pain and suffering, along with privacy and respect for the principal's dignity.

Insurance cannot be touched. ORS 127.565(2) and (3) bar anyone from requiring you to sign or refuse an advance directive as a condition for insurance, bar a provider from conditioning care on whether you signed one, and bar discrimination in premium or contract rates based on whether one exists.

Tampering is a crime. ORS 127.995(1) makes it a Class A felony to willfully alter, forge, conceal or destroy an instrument, a reinstatement or revocation, or other evidence of the principal's desires, without the principal's authorization, with the intent and effect of causing a withholding or withdrawal that hastens the principal's death. Subsection (2) makes the same conduct a Class A misdemeanor where the intent or effect is to affect a health care decision.

Two Things Oregon Does Not Have

Both are worth stating because a reader arrives expecting them.

There is no state registry for advance directives. The word registry does not appear anywhere in ORS 127.505 to 127.660. Every registry provision in chapter 127 belongs to the POLST registry at ORS 127.663 to 127.684, which holds clinician orders. Filing your directive with the state is not a step, because there is nowhere to file it. Nothing is recorded in a land record and nothing is filed with a court either. The only statutory filing duty runs the other way: ORS 127.510(5) requires a provider given a copy to make it part of your medical record.

Chapter 127 contains no electronic or remote execution provision for an advance directive. The word electronic occurs once in the entire chapter, and it is about the Oregon Health Authority publishing the nonopioid directive form on its website. There is no remote witnessing, audio-video or electronic-signature rule inside chapter 127 for this document. That is an absence measured in this chapter rather than a statewide prohibition, so ask your provider or your attorney before signing anything other than ink on paper.

There is also no pregnancy clause. The string "pregnan" does not appear anywhere in the 2025 Edition of ORS chapter 127, and Oregon's statutory form carries no paragraph suspending a directive during a pregnancy. A form in front of you that prints one is not describing Oregon law.

Moving To Or From Oregon

Oregon applies a three-way test and validates the document if any one branch is satisfied. ORS 127.515(6) provides that an advance directive, appointment form or similar instrument executed by an adult who resided in another state at the time of execution is validly executed here if it complied with the laws of that state, or the laws of the state where the principal was located at the time of execution, or the laws of Oregon.

Going the other direction, ORS 127.515(1) and ORS 127.529 both allow the Oregon statutory forms to be executed by an Oregon resident or by a resident of any other state while physically present in Oregon.

What To Do With Your Oregon Documents

Here is the order that avoids everything above.

1. Sign one advance directive, not two documents. The ORS 127.529 form carries both the appointment and your instructions. Use the ORS 127.527 appointment form only if you want to name a decision maker and leave the instructions out.
2. Pick the notary or the witnesses, not both. ORS 127.515(2) treats them as alternatives. If you are a patient in a long term care facility and you use witnesses, one must be designated by the facility.
3. Get the acceptance block signed. Until your representative accepts, the appointment does nothing. Ask your alternates to sign too.
4. Say yes or no on tube feeding. ORS 127.580 presumes consent to it. If you want your representative able to decline it, grant that authority in the document.
5. Grant life-support authority if you want it used outside the four conditions. Without an express grant, ORS 127.540(5) confines your representative to the four medically confirmed states.
6. Hand out copies. A provider owes nothing to a document it has never received. Your representative, your alternates and your regular clinic each need one.
7. Name anyone you want kept out. ORS 127.520(3) lets you disqualify a specific person in a signed writing.
8. Re-read it after a divorce filing, a move or a new diagnosis. A dissolution or annulment petition suspends a spouse appointment on filing unless you reaffirm it.
9. Ask about POLST only when treatment orders are the question. It is a clinician's order for a current condition, it is voluntary, and it does not replace this document.

For the rest of the plan, the Oregon power of attorney covers money and property during incapacity, Oregon guardianship and conservatorship covers what happens when nobody signed anything, Oregon will requirements covers what you leave behind, and the Oregon probate guide covers what your family faces after a death. The Oregon estate planning basics page puts the four documents in order.

Sources:

• Title: Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 127 (2025 Edition), Powers of Attorney; Advance Directives for Health Care; Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment Registry; Nonopioid Directives; Declarations for Mental Health Treatment; Death With Dignity. Publisher: Oregon Legislative Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors127.html
• Title: Oregon Laws 2021, Chapter 328 (Senate Bill 199), relating to advance directives. Publisher: Oregon Legislative Assembly. Publication Date: June 15, 2021. URL: https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/lawsstatutes/2021orLaw0328.pdf
• Title: Oregon Laws 2018, Chapter 36 (House Bill 4135), relating to health care decisions. Publisher: Oregon Legislative Assembly. Publication Date: March 16, 2018. URL: https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/lawsstatutes/2018orLaw0036.pdf
• Title: Oregon Laws 2025, Chapter 154 (House Bill 3211), relating to health directives. Publisher: Oregon Legislative Assembly. Publication Date: May 27, 2025. URL: https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/lawsstatutes/2025orLaw0154.pdf
• Title: ORS Sections Amended, Repealed or "Added To", Oregon Laws 2026 Regular Session. Publisher: Oregon Legislative Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/lawsstatutes/2026OrLawAR.pdf
• Title: Advance Directive Forms. Publisher: Oregon Health Authority, Public Health Division. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ph/about/pages/adac-forms.aspx
• Title: Oregon Advance Directive for Health Care (OHA 3905). Publisher: Oregon Health Authority. Publication Date: January 4, 2022. URL: https://sharedsystems.dhsoha.state.or.us/DHSForms/Served/le3905.pdf
• Title: Form for Appointing Health Care Representative and Alternate Health Care Representative. Publisher: Oregon Health Authority. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/ABOUT/Documents/Appointing-Healthcare-Representative.pdf
• Title: Your Guide to the Oregon Advance Directive for Health Care (OHA 3942). Publisher: Oregon Health Authority. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://sharedsystems.dhsoha.state.or.us/DHSForms/Served/le3942.pdf

It is not legal advice.