A living will has almost nothing to do with a will. That one piece of confusion sends people down the wrong road more than anything else we hear about in this area. A will decides who gets your property after you die. A living will speaks for you while you are alive, at a moment when you cannot speak for yourself.
Colorado has its own rules for these documents, and they are not the rules printed on a national form site. What follows is what the statute actually says, what each document does, and how we put them together for families in Denver, Greenwood Village, and Colorado Springs.
Key Takeaways
- In Colorado, a living will is formally a Declaration as to Medical Treatment, governed by the Colorado Medical Treatment Decision Act at Title 15, Article 18 of the Colorado Revised Statutes.
- It only takes effect if you have a terminal condition or are in a persistent vegetative state and have lost the capacity to make your own decisions. Outside those circumstances it does nothing.
- A medical durable power of attorney covers everything else, which is most of what actually happens to people.
- Colorado accepts either two witnesses or a notary on a living will. You do not need both.
- We build the end-of-life provisions into the medical power of attorney instead of handing clients two separate documents that can contradict each other.
What Colorado Actually Calls a Living Will
The Colorado Medical Treatment Decision Act is where this lives, at Title 15, Article 18 of the Colorado Revised Statutes. The formal name for the document is a Declaration as to Medical Treatment. Almost nobody says that out loud, including us. Everyone calls it a living will.
It applies in a narrow set of circumstances. Under section 15-18-104, the declaration becomes operative when you have a terminal condition or are in a persistent vegetative state and you lack the capacity to accept or reject treatment yourself. Until that threshold is crossed, the document sits in a drawer doing nothing at all.
That narrowness surprises people. They sign a living will, feel covered, and assume it handles whatever comes next. It does not, and the gap is wider than most people expect.
What a Living Will Decides, and What It Leaves Out
Inside those circumstances it answers a short list of questions. Whether you want life-sustaining procedures continued or withdrawn. Whether artificial nourishment and hydration should continue. How long any of it should go on before it stops.
Everything else sits outside the document. Whether you have a surgery. Whether you move to a different facility. Whether a doctor may discuss your chart with your daughter. Whether you get a feeding tube after a stroke you are expected to recover from. None of that is end-of-life care in the statutory sense, and a living will has nothing to say about any of it.
The Document That Does the Heavier Lifting
A medical durable power of attorney, under section 15-14-506, names an agent who can make health care decisions for you whenever you lack the capacity to make them yourself. Not only at the end. Any time.
This is the document that actually gets used. Someone recovering from a bad car accident on I-25. A parent partway into a dementia diagnosis. A patient who stays under anesthesia longer than anyone planned. In every one of those, a decision has to be made that day, and the hospital is going to ask who has authority to make it.
If nobody does, the alternative is court. A family member petitions, a judge holds a hearing, and a guardianship or conservatorship gets put in place while your care waits and your family pays the legal fees. We have watched families go through it. It is slow and it is expensive, and a signed piece of paper would have prevented all of it.
Why We Put Both Into One Document
Our clients leave with a single medical power of attorney that names an agent and sets out end-of-life wishes inside the same document. We do not hand out a standalone living will alongside it.
The reason is practical. Two documents can disagree with each other. When a living will points one direction and the named agent says something else, a hospital attorney sorts it out over the phone while the family sits in a waiting room. Keeping the person and the instructions in one place removes that argument before it can start.
It is also one less thing to find. Families are not at their most organized on the day they need this.
Signing It: Two Witnesses or a Notary
Colorado gives you a choice here, and section 15-18-106 spells it out. A declaration works if you sign it in front of two witnesses, or if you sign it and have it acknowledged before a notary public. One or the other. The belief that you need both is the most common misunderstanding we run into on execution.
The statute also limits who is allowed to witness, which is worth checking before you ask whoever happens to be in the room. That is part of why signing in our office takes about ten minutes and a form downloaded at the kitchen table sometimes comes back signed wrong.
About the Free Forms Online
A Colorado living will form is one of the most searched things that brings people to us, and the forms are real. Some of them are perfectly serviceable as paper.
What a form cannot do is tell you whether the boxes you checked reflect what you actually want, whether the person you named is the right person, or what happens when your agent and your adult children disagree in a hospital hallway at eleven at night. A form records a decision. It does not help you make one, and the making is the part that matters.
When to Look at It Again
Any time the person you named stops being the right person. Divorce is the obvious trigger. So is the death of a spouse, a falling out with an adult child, or an agent who moved to another state and cannot reach a Denver hospital the same afternoon.
We also suggest a review after any serious diagnosis. What you would have wanted at fifty is not always what you want at seventy-five with a condition you now understand in detail.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a living will have to be notarized in Colorado?
No. Colorado accepts either method. You can sign in front of two witnesses, or you can sign and have the document acknowledged before a notary. Either one satisfies section 15-18-106.
What is the difference between a living will and a medical power of attorney?
A living will states your wishes about end-of-life treatment in a narrow set of circumstances. A medical power of attorney names a person who can make health care decisions for you any time you cannot, which covers far more ground. Most people need the second one more than the first, and most people have only heard of the first.
Can my agent overrule what I wrote down?
No. Your agent is bound by your instructions, and under section 15-14-506 an agent cannot consent to or refuse treatment over your objection. Naming someone gives you judgment available for the situations your document never anticipated, not a veto over your own wishes.
I signed a living will in another state. Does it still work here?
It may, but that depends on how it was executed and what it says. Bring it in and we will read it and tell you whether it holds up in Colorado or needs to be redone. This is a short conversation, not a project.
What happens if I never sign either one?
Colorado has a process for appointing a proxy decision maker from among the people close to you, and if that does not work or the family cannot agree, someone ends up petitioning the court for guardianship. Both routes take time you may not have. Neither one lets you choose who decides.
Where to Start
Most people who call us about this are not planning in the abstract. Something happened to a parent or a friend, and they watched up close what it looks like when nobody has the authority to decide. If that is where you are, this is one appointment and one document, and it is among the least complicated things we do.
You can read more about how we handle advance directives and end of life planning, or see how these documents fit into a full estate plan. When you are ready, call 303-991-3544 and we will get you on the calendar.
