Living Wills & Advance Directives in Barrow County

Georgia Advance Directive Planning for Individuals & Families

Georgia law changed significantly on July 1, 2007. The Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care Act replaced the prior Georgia Living Will law and the Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care with a single combined document under Chapter 32 of Title 31 of the Official Code of Georgia. That one document now lets you name a health care agent to speak for you if you can’t speak for yourself, state your treatment preferences, nominate a guardian, and record preferences for after death. If you have a living will or durable power of attorney for health care signed before June 30, 2007, it remains valid until revoked, but it may not reflect your current wishes or Georgia’s current legal framework.

At Mitchell & Crunk Law Firm, our estate planning services include drafting advance directives alongside wills, trusts, and powers of attorney. We help Barrow County residents get a document that actually says what they mean.

Call us at (678) 701-6252 to schedule a free consultation about living wills and advance directives. Same-day appointments are available.

What a Mitchell & Crunk Law Firm-Drafted Advance Directive Covers

An advance directive prepared by our team lets you decide in advance what medical treatment to receive or refuse if you’re hospitalized and incapacitated. That decision belongs to you, and putting it in writing is an important way to help communicate your wishes.

Treatment Instructions
You can provide directions on organ donation, palliative care, experimental procedures, antibiotics, intubation, and resuscitation. These aren’t hypothetical concerns. They’re the decisions that can fall to someone else when no directive exists.

Health Care Agent Authority
The person you name as your health care agent is authorized to communicate with physicians and make decisions consistent with your written instructions. Without a named agent, there may be no legally designated person to advocate for you.

Guardian Nomination
Your directive can also nominate who you’d want a court to appoint as your guardian if guardianship ever becomes necessary. The Barrow County Probate Court handles guardianship appointments for incapacitated adults, and a nomination in your directive gives the court clear guidance. That matters if your family disagrees about who should serve.

After the document is prepared, we help make sure the appropriate parties receive a copy.

Why a Life Change Can Affect Your Existing Directive

Without an estate plan in place, a person who becomes incapacitated after a serious accident may have no say in the medical treatment they receive and no legally designated person to advocate for them. But an outdated estate plan can create its own problems.

Georgia law automatically revokes a former spouse’s designation as health care agent upon divorce or annulment. If you named your spouse and later divorced, that designation is gone. The question is whether you have a replacement. Similarly, certain later marriages can affect a previously named health care agent designation, so it’s worth having your directive reviewed after a marriage to confirm it still reflects your wishes.

Mitchell & Crunk Law Firm practices both family law, including divorce, and estate planning. That combination is directly relevant here. When a divorce or other family-law change affects your prior health care agent designation, we can help you understand what that change means and prepare an updated directive that reflects your current situation. Clients in Barrow County, Jackson County, and Walton County benefit from having both matters handled by a team that understands how they connect.

When you hire Mitchell & Crunk Law Firm, you’re assigned a full support team: an attorney, a paralegal, and a legal assistant working together on your case. Your advance directive gets the same careful preparation as any other legal matter we handle.