Vermont Advance Directive

Vermont puts your medical planning in one document. Under 18 V.S.A. chapter 231, a single advance directive can appoint a health care agent, record the treatment you do and do not want, make an anatomical gift, and direct the disposition of your remains. You sign it in front of two witnesses who are at least 18 years old. Vermont asks for no notary, and it offers no notary alternative to those witnesses.

Read this page as a planning map. The wording that fits your health, your family, and your beliefs is a personal decision, and a licensed Vermont attorney or your own clinician can confirm the document says what you mean before you sign.

This guide pairs with the Vermont power of attorney guide, which covers the separate financial document with its own execution rules, and with the Vermont guardianship guide for what a court-appointed guardian can and cannot override.

Vermont's Advance Directive Law Sits in Title 18

Check the citation first, because two Vermont chapters with exactly the right names are dead, and both of them still appear in their title-level chapter lists under those live-sounding names.

• 14 V.S.A. chapter 121, "Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care." Open the chapter and the whole thing is one line: "§§ 3451-3467. Recodified. 2003, No. 162 (Adj. Sess.), § 15. [Repealed]". Any source citing this chapter as current Vermont law was written before 2004.
• 18 V.S.A. chapter 111, "Advance Directives for Health Care and End of Life." Its section list carries two entries, and both read "Repealed. 2005, No. 55, § 9, eff. Sept. 1, 2005."

The live law is chapter 231 of Title 18, added by the same 2005 act that repealed chapter 111, effective September 1, 2005. It runs from § 9700 to § 9721 in subchapter 1, plus one section, § 9731, in a surrogate subchapter that arrived twelve years later under 2015 Act 136 (Adj. Sess.) § 1, effective January 1, 2018. That gap explains a lot about how narrow the surrogate rules are.

Vermont did not adopt the Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act. Chapter 231 is a Vermont act with its own architecture, and it sits in the health title rather than the probate title, so answers ported from a neighboring state break in specific places.

Learn four words before you open a form.

• Principal. You, once you have signed. 18 V.S.A. § 9701(23) defines the principal as an adult who has executed an advance directive.
• Agent. The adult with capacity to whom you delegate health care decisions, including an alternate when your first choice is not reasonably available.
• Clinician. Section 9701(5) reaches wider than "doctor." It covers a licensed medical doctor, an osteopathic physician, an advanced practice registered nurse, and a physician assistant acting within the scope of the license under which the clinician is practicing.
• Surrogate. A term of art with a narrow job, covered further down this page. A Vermont surrogate is not a general substitute decision-maker.

Section 9701(4) then splits capacity in two, which matters more than it sounds. Capacity to appoint an agent means a basic understanding of what it means to have someone else make health care decisions for you, and the ability to identify whom you want. Capacity to make a health care decision means a basic understanding of the diagnosed condition and the benefits, risks, and alternatives to the proposed care. Someone who can no longer weigh a specific treatment may still be able to name the person who will.

Chapter 231 never prints an age for the principal. It says "adult," and the number comes from the general definitions title: 1 V.S.A. § 173 provides that persons of the age of 18 years shall be considered of age. The one age the chapter states itself is the witness age in § 9703(b)(1).

What One Vermont Advance Directive Can Do

18 V.S.A. § 9702(a) opens with "An adult may do any or all of the following in an advance directive" and then lists eighteen things. None is required. Pick the ones you want.

Among them, you may:

• appoint one or more agents and alternate agents and set the scope of their authority;
• specify a circumstance or condition, which may be unrelated to your capacity, that turns the agent's authority on or off;
• provide that the directive becomes effective on execution;
• direct the type of health care you want and do not want, including instructions on transfer from home, on hospitalization, and on specific treatments when you are being treated for a mental or physical condition or disability;
• direct which life sustaining treatments you want, including nutrition and hydration administered by medical means;
• direct which life sustaining treatment you would want if you are pregnant when the directive becomes effective;
• name people you do not want as your decision-maker, and people your agent must or must not consult;
• identify a preferred clinician;
• nominate someone to serve as your guardian if a guardianship is ever needed;
• make, limit, or refuse an anatomical gift; and
• direct the manner of disposition of your remains and the funeral goods and services to be provided.

Section 9701(1) is the reason all of that fits on one signature block. It defines an advance directive as "a written record executed pursuant to section 9703 of this title, which may include appointment of an agent, identification of a preferred primary care clinician, instructions on health care desires or treatment goals, an anatomical gift, disposition of remains, and funeral goods and services," and adds that "The term includes documents designated under prior law as a durable power of attorney for health care or a terminal care document."

Vermont has no separate statutory living will. If you already hold an older Vermont durable power of attorney for health care or a terminal care document, § 9703(f) keeps it valid so long as it complied with the law in effect when you signed it. Nothing has to be redone.

One more line is worth knowing. Section 9702(b) says the absence of a directive, or of any specific instruction in one, has no effect on determining your intent or wishes. Silence in a Vermont directive proves nothing against you.

Choosing Your Health Care Agent

Vermont's disqualifications for an agent are institutional rather than family-based, which is the opposite of the witness rule two sections later.

Section 9702(c) bars your own health care provider from serving as your agent, with no exception. It then bars an owner, operator, employee, agent, or contractor of a residential care facility, health care facility, or correctional facility where you live at the time you sign, unless that person is related to you by blood, marriage, civil union, or adoption. An adult daughter who works at her mother's nursing home is not disqualified by that paragraph.

A parallel rule sits in § 9702(d) for the funeral side. Unless related to you the same way, a funeral director, crematory operator, cemetery official, or procurement organization representative may not exercise the directive's authority over remains, anatomical gifts, or funeral goods and services while serving your interests in that role.

You may name more than one agent, and § 9702(a)(1) lets you set the scope of each. Chapter 231 sets no default ranking among co-agents, so write one in. What the chapter does supply is a working rule for the bedside. Under 18 V.S.A. § 9707(e), unless the directive requires otherwise, a clinician may rely on one agent's decision after documenting in the medical record that the agent confirmed one of three things: all agents agree on the pending decision, all agents agree this one may decide, or the others are not reasonably available.

18 V.S.A. § 9711 then sets what your agent may do and how.

• Reach. Subsection (a) gives the agent authority to make any health care decision you could make yourself, subject to the chapter, other law, your own written instructions, and any court order.
• Standard. Subsection (d) requires substituted judgment. After consulting you to the extent possible, your clinician, other appropriate providers, and anyone your directive names, the agent decides by attempting to determine what you would have wanted, weighing your written instructions, your wishes expressed to the agent or a provider, and the agent's knowledge of your values or religious or moral beliefs. Only when that is impossible does the agent fall back to your best interests, and even then the agent may not weigh your economic status or a preexisting long-term mental or physical disability. The subsection closes by forbidding the agent to consider the agent's own interests, wishes, values, or beliefs.
• Exit ramp. Subsection (d)(4) requires an agent who cannot or will not decide on that standard to recuse from the decision or resign, and to notify you, the alternate agent, the health care provider, and the residential care provider.
• Information. Subsection (e) gives your agent the same rights you would have to request, review, receive, and copy oral or written information about your physical or mental health, including medical and hospital records, to sit in on meetings about your care, to consent to disclosure, and to file a complaint on your behalf.
• One prohibition. Subsection (f) says nothing in the chapter gives an agent authority to consent to voluntary sterilization. That is the chapter's only express bar on an agent's decisions. Vermont writes no pregnancy override and no psychosurgery or shock-therapy clause of the kind several other states carry.

Guardianship does not push your agent aside. Under § 9711(g), unless the Probate Division expressly orders otherwise in a guardianship proceeding under 14 V.S.A. § 3069(b), an agent appointed before the guardian was appointed keeps that authority, and the instructions in the directive stay in effect.

Two Witnesses, and Vermont Never Asks for a Notary

Here is the rule most cross-state summaries get wrong. 18 V.S.A. § 9703 is the entire execution rule for a Vermont advance directive, and the words notary, notarize, and justice of the peace appear nowhere in it.

Subsection (b)(1) asks for four things. The directive must be dated. It must be executed by you, or by another individual in your presence and at your express direction if you are physically unable to sign. It must be signed by two or more witnesses at least 18 years of age. And those witnesses must sign and affirm that you appeared to understand the nature of the document and to be free from duress or undue influence at the time it was signed.

Subsection (c) is the whole disqualification list, and it is short: "Neither the agent appointed by the principal nor the principal's spouse, parent, adult sibling, adult child, or adult grandchild may witness the advance directive."

Read that against subsection (b)(3), which says a health care provider may serve as a witness. Vermont runs the common pattern backward. Most states bar the clinician and welcome the family. Vermont bars the immediate family and welcomes the clinician, and it disqualifies no heir, no beneficiary under a will or trust, no creditor, and no niece, nephew, or friend. Do not import another state's "nobody who inherits" witness rule here.

Two more allowances sit in the same section.

Remote witnessing is permanent now. Subsection (b)(2) says that on and after April 1, 2024 you must either have signed in the physical presence of the witness, or three conditions must be met for a remote witness: you and the remote witness were known to each other; based on a live, interactive, audio-video connection or by telephone, the remote witness attested that you seemed to understand the nature of the document and to be free from duress or undue influence at signing; and you put the remote witness's name, contact information, and relationship to you on the directive itself. Telephone alone is enough. This replaced the temporary pandemic authority at § 9721, which expired March 31, 2024 and still preserves directives signed inside that window.

Digital signatures work, on Vermont's definition. Subsection (g) lets you, a witness, or an explainer sign digitally. Section 9701(35) then defines a digital signature with seven cumulative requirements, including an algorithm approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology or by the Department of Health, sole control by the signer, invalidation if the underlying data changes, persistence with the document rather than by association in separate files, and binding to a digital certificate. A typed name at the bottom of a PDF does not clear that bar.

Once the document is signed, 18 V.S.A. § 9717 protects it in three sentences. It is presumed valid. No third party may require an additional or different form of advance directive. A photocopy or facsimile of a duly executed original must be relied upon to the same extent as the original. A Vermont hospital or nursing home cannot lawfully insist on its own house form or demand the wet-ink original.

Signing Inside a Nursing Home or Hospital Adds an Explainer

Vermont adds a step most states skip, and it is a condition of the document working at all rather than a best-practice suggestion.

Under § 9703(d)(1), a directive shall not be effective if, at the time of execution, you are being admitted to or are a resident of a nursing home as defined in 33 V.S.A. § 7102 or a residential care facility, unless one of eight listed individuals explains the nature and effect of an advance directive to you and signs a statement affirming that the explanation was given. Those eight are an ombudsman, a recognized member of the clergy, an attorney licensed to practice in Vermont, a Probate Division designee, an individual designated by a hospital under § 9709(d), a mental health patient representative, an unpaid volunteer at the facility who has received appropriate training on explaining advance directives, or a clinician who is not employed by that facility.

The statute states its own reason at (d)(2): "It is the intent of this subsection to ensure that residents of nursing homes and residential care facilities are willingly and voluntarily executing advance directives."

Subsection (e)(1) repeats the rule for a hospital, and the list is shorter. Six names, dropping the trained volunteer and the non-employed clinician. A hospital patient's explainer has to be an ombudsman, clergy, a Vermont-licensed attorney, a Probate Division designee, a hospital-designated individual under § 9709(d), or a mental health patient representative.

Two practical notes. The explanation may be delivered in person, through a live interactive audio-video connection, or by telephone. And under § 9703(b)(4), the person who gave the explanation may also serve as one of your two witnesses, so this does not always mean finding a third body.

If you are signing at your own kitchen table, none of this applies to you.

When a Vermont Advance Directive Takes Effect

18 V.S.A. § 9706(a) gives three alternative triggers, and you choose which ones your document uses.

1. A clinician's determination of incapacity. Your clinician determines, after speaking with an interested individual if one is reasonably available, that you lack capacity, and makes specific findings regarding the cause, nature, and projected duration of that incapacity. The clinician must also make reasonable efforts to notify you, and to notify your agent or guardian.
2. A condition you wrote in. The circumstance or condition you specified under § 9702(a)(3) has been met. That condition may be unrelated to your capacity.
3. Execution itself. The directive becomes effective when you sign it, if you provided for that under § 9702(a)(4).

Notice the count on route one: one clinician, not two. The only place chapter 231 asks for a second clinician on a capacity question is § 9707(h)(2), covered in the next section.

Route three surprises people who assume every health care agency has to be springing. Naming an agent today does not hand your voice away, because § 9711(b) says a principal with capacity retains concurrent authority with the agent, and where the two of you disagree, "the decision of the principal shall be controlling." That is the safety valve Vermont built instead of a delayed trigger.

Three follow-on rules round it out.

• Certification. When you have a clinician, § 9706(b) requires that clinician to certify in your medical record the facts that caused the directive to become effective.
• Reexamination. Section 9706(c) lets your clinician, another clinician, or a clinician's designee reexamine you for capacity on a determination of need, or on request by you, your agent, guardian, an ombudsman, a mental health patient representative, a health care provider, or any interested individual. The result goes in the medical record with notice to you, your agent or guardian, and whoever asked.
• Recovery. Section 9711(c) ends the agent's authority when a clinician determines you have recovered capacity, in the case of a directive that became effective on route one, or when a condition you specified is no longer met. Recovery suspends the agent's authority; it does not revoke the document.

A disputed capacity call can go to the Probate Division under 18 V.S.A. § 9718, and this is the one petition Vermont gates. Subsection (d) requires the petitioner to give notice before filing, file a supporting affidavit setting out specific facts, either obtain a contrary clinician determination or explain the attempts made to get one, and notify your clinician that the petition was filed. Find the right court through the Vermont probate court directory.

The remains provisions run on a different clock. Section 9706(e) makes a directive regarding disposition of your remains effective on your death.

Authorizing Treatment Over Your Own Objection

Vermont lets you pre-authorize your agent to act over your own later objection, and it surrounds that permission with more formality than anything else in the chapter. People planning around a condition with a cyclical loss of insight, where a future self may refuse the care the present self wants, are the reason § 9707(h) exists.

To be valid, the provision has to name an agent, and that agent has to accept the responsibility in writing. A clinician for you must sign the provision and affirm that you appeared to understand the benefits, risks, and alternatives to the care being authorized or rejected. An ombudsman, mental health patient representative, Vermont-licensed attorney, or Probate Division designee must sign a statement affirming that they explained the nature and effect of the provision and that you appeared to understand it and to be free from duress or undue influence. If you are a hospital patient when you sign, that explainer has to be independent of the hospital and not an interested individual. The provision must name the treatments it applies to, say explicitly that you desire or do not desire them even over your objection at the time, and include an acknowledgment that you are knowingly and voluntarily waiving the right to refuse or receive treatment at a time of incapacity.

Then it sits dormant. Under § 9707(h)(2), the provision becomes effective only when your clinician and a second clinician have both determined under § 9706(a)(1) that you lack capacity. The first time you execute one, both the clinician and the explainer must be physically present with you; on a later amendment or re-execution each may act through a live, interactive, audio-video connection.

One asymmetry follows from all that care. Under § 9704(b)(3), a § 9707(h) provision may be suspended or revoked only while you have capacity, unlike the rest of the document.

Registering With the Vermont Advance Directive Registry

Vermont runs a state registry, and it is free.

18 V.S.A. § 9719(b)(1) directs the Commissioner of Health to develop and maintain a registry to which a principal may submit an advance directive, including a terminal care document and a durable power of attorney, and forbids the information being accessed or used for any purpose unrelated to health care decision making or disposition of remains, except in de-identified form for statistical or analytical work. The Commissioner also gives anyone who submits a directive a sticker for a driver's license or identification card showing that the holder has one on file.

The Department of Health administers the Vermont Advance Directive Registry through the Vermont Ethics Network under contract, and its page states the two things a planner needs: "Registering a copy of your advance directive is free for all Vermont residents," and "You are not required to register a copy of your advance directive, and your directive is valid as soon as signing and witnessing is properly completed." Submission runs by online upload or by mail, fax, or email with a combined registration agreement and change form.

Registration is worth doing anyway, because of what it triggers on the other side. Section 9709(b) requires every health care provider, health care facility, and residential care facility to develop protocols that make your directive and any DNR/COLST order promptly available, note its existence prominently on the file jacket and in any electronic database, and check the registry when an individual without capacity is admitted or provided services.

Registration does not replace handing out copies. 18 V.S.A. § 9705 puts a duty on whoever holds your executed directive: on learning that its terms may apply, that person must deliver it to your clinician, other health care provider, health care facility, or residential care facility, unless they know another copy has already been delivered and is available. Give one to your agent, one to your alternate, and one to your primary care practice.

There is no Vermont statutory form to fill in. Section 9719(a) instead directs the Commissioner to adopt at least one optional form with an accompanying explanation of choices and responsibilities, and the Department's own Advance Directives for Health Care Rule says at section 3.2 that "Although a specific form is not required to execute an Advance Directive, a suggested form, and related information, is posted on the Department's website." The Department publishes an agent-appointment form, a short form, and a long form, and says on its own page that Vermont law does not favor one over another.

Without an Agent, Vermont Gives Your Family Very Little

This is the section to read twice, because the answer most people carry in their heads comes from a different state.

18 V.S.A. § 9731 is the only section in the surrogate subchapter, and its title is the whole scope: "Informed consent by surrogate for DNR/COLST order." Section 9701(32) matches, defining a surrogate as an interested individual who provides or withholds informed consent for a do-not-resuscitate order or a clinician order for life-sustaining treatment. A Vermont surrogate cannot consent to surgery, to a nursing home admission, or to ordinary treatment. Anyone telling a Vermont patient that a sister can approve an operation because she is next of kin is describing law that does not exist here.

Three more features run against the grain.

• There is no ranked priority list. No spouse, then adult children, then parents queue. The surrogate comes from an unranked pool called "interested individual," defined at § 9701(18) as your spouse, adult child, parent, adult sibling, adult grandchild, or clergy person, or any adult who has exhibited special care and concern for you and is personally familiar with your values. Those two paragraphs are alternatives. A close friend who fits the second one stands on the same footing as a spouse, and the order of the words in the first one is not a hierarchy.
• Selection runs on designation or agreement. Under § 9731(c), the surrogate is whoever you designated by personally telling your clinician, documented in the record if you said it out loud. Failing that, your clinician makes a reasonable attempt to notify all reasonably available interested individuals, and § 9731(d)(1) lets a clinician rely on a surrogate only after documenting that the interested individuals agree on the decision, or agree that this person may make it, or that the designated surrogate is not reasonably available. If they cannot agree, § 9731(d)(2) sends an interested person to file a petition for guardianship in the Probate Division. Vermont has no majority-rules tiebreaker.
• There is no time limit. Section 9731 contains no day count and no renewal requirement. New Hampshire's 180-day surrogate cap has no Vermont analogue. The authority ends by its own conditions instead: you regain capacity and decide personally under § 9731(g), you object under § 9731(c)(3), an agent or guardian appears, or the surrogate stops being reasonably available.

Five conditions in § 9731(b) all have to hold before a surrogate can act at all: your clinician determines you lack capacity to give informed consent, you appointed no agent, you gave no contrary instruction about that person in a directive, you have no guardian authorized to make health care decisions, and you do not object, "even if the patient lacks capacity."

Outside DNR and COLST, chapter 231 supplies exactly one other family route. 18 V.S.A. § 9710 lets a family member, or a person with a known close relationship to the patient, elect hospice care on the patient's behalf when the patient has no agent or guardian or they are unavailable, deciding on the same substituted-judgment standard § 9711(d) sets for an agent.

Everything else needs a guardian appointed by the Probate Division of the Superior Court under 14 V.S.A. chapter 111. That is a court case, with an evaluation, a hearing, and a clear-and-convincing standard. Naming an agent on a two-witness form avoids it, which is why this document earns its place beside your will in the Vermont estate planning basics checklist.

DNR and COLST Orders Are Clinician Orders, Not Directives

The Department of Health draws the line in one sentence: DNR/COLST orders are not advance directives. Your directive is a plan you write. A DNR order or a COLST is a present instruction signed by a clinician and pointed at other providers and at emergency responders.

18 V.S.A. § 9708 sets the rules. Subsection (b) requires both to be issued on the Department of Health's Vermont DNR/COLST form as designated by rule. Subsection (c) carves out one exception: health care facilities and residential care facilities may document DNR/COLST orders in the patient's medical record in a facility-specific manner while the patient is in their care.

A DNR order under subsection (d) must be signed by your clinician, certify that the clinician consulted or tried to consult with you and with your agent or guardian, and either name the person giving informed consent and their relationship to you, or certify that your clinician and one other named clinician have determined that resuscitation would not prevent your imminent death should you experience cardiopulmonary arrest. That second path is a medical-futility route with a second-clinician check, not a substitute decision-maker route. A COLST under subsection (e) needs the clinician's signature and the name and relationship of the person consenting.

Four more rules matter at the bedside.

• Honoring the order. Subsection (i) requires every provider and facility to honor a DNR/COLST order or DNR identification unless it believes in good faith, after consulting the agent or guardian where possible and appropriate, that you want it revoked or that the person wearing the identification is not the person it was issued for, and documents the basis for that belief in the medical record.
• Identification. Subsection (h) has the issuing clinician authorize a DNR identification, which § 9701(9) defines as a necklace, bracelet, or anklet.
• Scope. Subsection (l) says a DNR order precludes resuscitation only in the event of cardiopulmonary arrest and does not affect other therapeutic interventions. A Vermont DNR is not an order to stop treating.
• Travel. Subsection (k) requires a provider to honor in good faith an out-of-state DNR order, orders for life sustaining treatment, or out-of-state DNR identification where there is no reason to believe what has been presented is invalid.

Changing, Suspending, or Revoking the Document

18 V.S.A. § 9704 is more forgiving than most people expect, and the capacity line falls in an unusual place.

With capacity, you may amend, suspend, or revoke a directive or any specific instruction in it by executing a new one under § 9703. Watch the overlap rule: a provision in a later directive amends an earlier provision only to the extent of a conflict, so a new document does not automatically wipe the old one out.

With or without capacity, subsection (b)(1) lets you suspend or revoke all or part of the directive, including the agent designation, three ways: by signing a statement that suspends or revokes it, by personally informing your clinician, who must then make a written record of it in your medical record, or by burning, tearing, or obliterating the document yourself or through another person acting in your presence at your express direction. Subsection (b)(2) adds that anything other than the agent designation may be suspended or revoked orally, in writing, or by any other act evidencing a specific intent. Undoing the agent appointment takes one of the three formal routes.

Divorce acts on its own, and it acts early. Subsection (d) provides that the filing of an action or motion for annulment, divorce, dissolution of a civil union, legal separation, or an order for relief from abuse, by, on behalf of, or against you, suspends a previous designation of your spouse or the opposing party as agent, unless the directive, decree, or court order says otherwise. Two details separate this from most states. It is the filing rather than the decree that operates, and the effect is suspension rather than revocation, so the designation comes back if the action is withdrawn or a temporary relief-from-abuse order expires, and becomes permanent only when the annulment, divorce, dissolution, or legal separation is final or the abuse motion is granted.

Word then has to travel. Subsection (b)(4) asks you to communicate any suspension or revocation to your agent or another interested individual so far as possible. Subsection (c) puts the heavier duties on everyone else: a clinician or facility that learns of one while treating an incapacitated principal must confirm it, record it, flag it on the front of the medical folder or on the front of any directive filed in the record, notify you, your agent, and your guardian, and inform the registry. An agent or guardian who learns of one carries a matching duty, including notifying anyone known to hold a copy.

Subsection (e) closes with a rule that saves partial documents. Unless the directive says otherwise, each provision is severable from the others if it can be given effect independently.

What This Means for Your Vermont Advance Directive

A Vermont advance directive that holds up usually comes together like this.

1. Pick your agent and an alternate. Confirm neither is your own health care provider, and that neither works for the facility where you live unless they are related to you by blood, marriage, civil union, or adoption.
2. Decide when it turns on. Leave the default and it waits for one clinician's determination of incapacity. Or write in a condition of your own. Or make it effective on signing, knowing § 9711(b) keeps your decision controlling for as long as you have capacity.
3. Write the instructions that matter to you, including life sustaining treatment, nutrition and hydration administered by medical means, a preferred clinician, anatomical gifts, and disposition of your remains. All of it fits in the same document.
4. Line up two witnesses who are at least 18 and are not your agent, spouse, parent, adult sibling, adult child, or adult grandchild. A health care provider is allowed. Skip the notary; Vermont does not use one here.
5. If you are in or entering a nursing home, residential care facility, or hospital, arrange the required explainer from the § 9703(d) or § 9703(e) list first. Without that signed affirmation the document is not effective, and that person can double as one of your witnesses.
6. Deliver copies to your agent, your alternate, and your primary care practice, then consider registering with the Vermont Advance Directive Registry so a hospital can find it when nobody thought to bring the paperwork.
7. Review it after a move, a divorce filing, a diagnosis, or a death in the family. A new directive amends the old one only where the two conflict.

Next steps for the rest of the plan: the financial half of incapacity planning lives in the separate Vermont power of attorney document, the Vermont will requirements guide covers the signing rules for a will, and the Vermont probate guide explains what happens after a death.

Sources:

• Title: 18 V.S.A. chapter 231, Advance Directives for Health Care, Disposition of Remains, and Surrogate Decision Making. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/chapter/18/231
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9701, Definitions. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09701
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9702, Advance directive. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09702
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9703, Form and execution. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09703
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9704, Amendment, suspension, and revocation. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09704
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9705, Duty to deliver. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09705
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9706, When advance directive becomes effective. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09706
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9707, Authority and obligations of health care providers, health care facilities, and residential care facilities regarding health care instructions. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09707
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9708, Authority and obligations of health care providers, health care facilities, and residential care facilities regarding DNR orders and COLST. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09708
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9709, Obligations of health care providers, health care facilities, residential care facilities, and health insurers regarding protocols and nondiscrimination. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09709
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9710, Consent for hospice care. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09710
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9711, Authority and obligations of agent. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09711
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9717, Presumption of validity. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09717
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9718, Petition for review by the Probate Division of the Superior Court. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09718
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9719, Obligations of State agencies. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09719
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9721, Advance directives executed during a state of emergency. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09721
• Title: 18 V.S.A. § 9731, Informed consent by surrogate for DNR/COLST order. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/18/231/09731
• Title: 14 V.S.A. chapter 121, Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care (recodified and repealed). Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/chapter/14/121
• Title: 18 V.S.A. chapter 111, Advance Directives for Health Care and End of Life (repealed). Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/chapter/18/111
• Title: 1 V.S.A. § 173, Minors. Publisher: Vermont General Assembly. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://legislature.vermont.gov/statutes/section/01/003/00173
• Title: Create, Register and Make Changes to an Advance Directive. Publisher: Vermont Department of Health. Publication Date: Not listed. URL: https://www.healthvermont.gov/systems/advance-directives/create-register-and-make-changes-advance-directive
• Title: Advance Directives for Health Care Rule. Publisher: Vermont Department of Health. Publication Date: April 1, 2019. URL: https://www.healthvermont.gov/sites/default/files/document/reg-advance-directives.pdf

It is not legal advice.