Since March of 2020 when America shut down due to Covid-19, many Lockheed Martin employees–and people in general–experienced an awakening. They started asking themselves questions like:
- “Are my finances in order if something happens to me?”
- “When’s the last time I had my Will reviewed?”
- “Do I need to write a Will?”
- “If I got Covid-19 and was put in the hospital, what kind of care would I want?”
- “What would my family want for me?”
- “Would I want extreme measures taken to keep me alive?”
These can be frightening questions to ask oneself, as that means we are fully confronting our own mortality, and that can be very hard for people who see the afterlife of their soul as an unknown. But these are very important questions to ask oneself and to prepare for the future, even if there wasn’t a pandemic racing across the globe because like it or not, we are all going to pass away. We just don’t know when or how it will happen.
So today, let’s focus on how to make preparations and how to ease the burden for family members should a medical situation occur where your life is on the line. You can do this through legal documents: a Living Will and a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) Order. They vary from each other based on the type of life-saving care you desire. It’s extremely important to note that these are NOT the same thing.
WHAT IS A LIVING WILL?
A living will is a proactive planning tool, sometimes called an advance directive for medical care. It is prepared prior to the onset of a debilitating illness or injury, much like a last will and testament is made prior to death. In addition to making it clear how you feel about life-sustaining medical intervention, a living will can designate a health care proxy to communicate your wishes to medical personnel and even authorize your proxy to make the final decision regarding life support, tube-feeding and other medical intervention.
One of the best features of a living will is that it gives your health care proxy and other loved ones proof of your wishes, in the event friends and family disagree about whether you would want have wanted life support or artificial nutrition under certain circumstances. Many people feel strongly about whether they would want to be kept on life support if there were no hope of recovery or regaining a meaningful quality of life, and many a family feud has been waged over whether to remove a loved one from life support.
WHAT IS A DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) ORDER?
A DNR order is another kind of advance directive. A DNR is a request not to have cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) if your heart stops or if you stop breathing. (Unless given other instructions, hospital staff will try to help all patients whose heart has stopped or who have stopped breathing.) You can use an advance directive form or tell your doctor that you don’t want to be resuscitated. In this case, a DNR order is put in your medical chart by your doctor.
There is also an Out-of-Hospital DNR Order. This form instructs emergency medical personnel and other health care professionals to forgo resuscitation attempts and to permit the patient to have a natural death with peace and dignity. This order does NOT affect the provision of other emergency care including comfort care. Typically, the order should be displayed in an area that emergency medical personnel can easily find, such as on your refrigerator.
Whether or not you decide to use one of these documents for your own future planning, it’s vitally important to make sure your family knows what you would want. We encourage you to look at your overall financial and estate plan and have a discussion with your family and an advisor to see if either of these would be beneficial for your personal situation. If you don’t have an advisor or an estate planning attorney and would like further information and direction, we’d be happy to speak with you. Give us a call today at 817-210-3444 or click HERE to book a complimentary consultation with one of our Lockheed Martin specialists who can review your situation and help you continue to plan for retirement.
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Be sure and check back next week for more valuable Lockheed Martin information. Cheers!