Why you need an Advance Directive: a Case Study
The importance of including an Advance Directive in your estate planning is highlighted this Vancouver Sun feature story (http://shar.es/6xD59) describing a family battle taking place in BC Supreme Court between a mother and her children over the life or death of their husband and father.
The husband and father in question is Kenny Ng, a 57-year old electrical engineer and the founder of Phase Technology, a successful company that designs, manufactures and sells petroleum analysers. Today Mr. Ng is minimally conscious at best and is being kept alive by a feeding tube after a serious motor vehicle accident seven years ago.
His children believe because of his commitment to technology and progress their father would “jump at the chance” to participate in a ground-breaking study and potentially benefit from recent neuroscience medical discoveries. They want the BC Supreme Court Justice hearing the matter to intercede on their behalf. Mrs. Ng doesn’t agree and she wants to remove her husband’s feeding tube which would result in his death from starvation within two weeks.
Unfortunately, the only person who really knows what Mr. Ng would want in these circumstances is Mr. Ng himself and he is physically incapable of saying.
On September 1, 2011 changes to BC’s health care and estate planning laws gave legal status to Advance Directives. What this means is in most situations the health care decisions you make today as an adult of sound mind will be legally binding on your regulated health care providers in the future when the unforeseeable happens and you are unable to communicate your wishes.
A properly-drafted Advance Directive ensures your personal, religious and cultural beliefs are respected through the choices of medical care and treatment you expressly consent to receive, or that which you expressly refuse. It also contemplates what will happen if there is a medical breakthrough between the time you make the Advance Directive and when it is used.
One of the greatest tragedies for Mr. Ng and his family is that there is a very real possibility that when the Court battle is over, the lawyers are paid and a decision is made no one will know with 100% certainty that the outcome is what Mr. Ng himself would have wanted. If you take the time now to get your Advance Directive and other estate planning documents in order this is one tragedy you and your family should be able to avoid.