Louisiana Living Will: Form Choices, Signing, and Revocation

A Louisiana living will — called a Declaration under state law — lets you direct your doctors to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatment if you develop a terminal and irreversible condition and can no longer speak for yourself.¹ You sign the statutory form in front of two witnesses, choose whether feeding tubes and IV fluids should stop along with other interventions, and give a copy to your doctor. The document only takes effect under narrow conditions, so understanding when it applies matters as much as signing it.

When Your Declaration Actually Takes Effect

Your Declaration does not activate the moment you lose consciousness or become confused. Two physicians who have personally examined you — one of them your attending physician — must certify in writing that you have a terminal and irreversible condition.¹ Louisiana defines that as a continual, profound state where no medical treatment can cure the underlying illness and death will occur whether or not life-sustaining procedures continue.

Until that certification happens, your living will sits dormant. Temporary incapacitation after surgery, a brief unconsciousness from an accident, a stroke you may recover from — none of these trigger the document. This threshold catches many people off guard, because the common assumption is that a living will governs any situation where you can’t communicate. It doesn’t.

The Two Choices on the Form

Louisiana’s statutory form forces one decision. You initial exactly one of two options:²

Withhold or withdraw all life-sustaining procedures, including nutrition and hydration delivered by tube or IV.
Withhold or withdraw life-sustaining procedures like mechanical ventilation and CPR, but continue nutrition and hydration.

Either way, you still receive comfort care, including pain medication and anything else needed to keep you comfortable. The nutrition and hydration question is the one families most often fight over, and Louisiana puts it in front of you rather than leaving the gap for your relatives to argue through later.

You can download the official form from the Louisiana Secretary of State’s website. Adding personalized instructions on top of the statutory language is permitted — Louisiana’s statute treats the Declaration as a permissive tool and allows supplemental written preferences as long as the core form requirements are satisfied.³ Sticking close to the statutory wording reduces the chance of a dispute.

Signing Requirements

Sign the Declaration in the presence of two witnesses.⁴ Each witness attests on the form that they personally know you and believe you to be of sound mind at the time of signing.²

Notarization is not required. Some people have the document notarized anyway because a notary’s seal helps if authenticity is ever challenged, but the statute does not condition validity on it.

Louisiana also allows a Declaration to be made orally or through nonverbal communication rather than in writing.¹ That provision exists mainly for people who have become physically unable to write. An oral declaration still has to reach the attending physician to do anything.

Get a Copy to Your Doctor

The law puts the responsibility on you to tell your attending physician that a Declaration exists.⁵ If you can’t communicate, someone else can notify the physician for you, and the physician or facility can also check the Secretary of State’s registry.

Once notified, your physician must promptly place the Declaration or a copy in your medical record. For an oral or nonverbal declaration, the physician also documents why you couldn’t make a written one. This is where many Declarations fail in practice: people sign the form, maybe even register it, and then never give a copy to their doctor. When a crisis arrives, no one at the hospital knows the document exists.

Registering With the Secretary of State

Registration is optional. You can file your signed Declaration with the Louisiana Secretary of State’s living will registry for $20.00, which covers the filing, a laminated identification card, and an ID bracelet that alerts emergency responders.² You mail the completed form and fee to the Elections Services office in Baton Rouge. A certified copy from the registry later costs another $20.00.

The point of registering is a centralized record hospitals and physicians can check when you arrive at an unfamiliar facility and your family isn’t there to produce a paper copy. It does not replace giving a copy to your own doctor.

The Pregnancy Provision

Louisiana law requires that a Declaration be read to preserve human life, including the life of an unborn child, when an obstetrician determines the probable age of the unborn child is twenty or more weeks post-fertilization and your life can be maintained to allow a live birth. In practice, your directive can be overridden during pregnancy under those circumstances, even if you chose to withdraw all life-sustaining treatment.

This is one of the more consequential provisions in Louisiana’s advance directive law. If it concerns you, talk through it with your physician and an attorney before finalizing the form.

What a Living Will Does Not Cover

A Louisiana Declaration covers one scenario only: withdrawing or withholding life-sustaining treatment once you have a certified terminal and irreversible condition. It does not appoint anyone to make other medical decisions for you, and it does not function as a doctor’s order that paramedics or an ER must follow on the spot.

To appoint a decision-maker, Louisiana lets you designate a healthcare agent through a mandate, the state’s term for a power of attorney.⁶ That agent can consent to surgery, choose between treatments, and handle the many medical decisions that sit outside the narrow trigger of your living will. Without a healthcare power of attorney, Louisiana law hands those decisions to family members in a statutory priority order, which may or may not match who you’d actually choose.

For people already facing a serious, advanced illness, Louisiana also offers the Physician Orders for Scope of Treatment, known as LaPOST.⁷ A LaPOST form is signed by your physician and functions as an actual medical order that paramedics, emergency rooms, and nursing facilities must follow immediately. A living will tells your doctors what you want; a LaPOST tells them what to do, right now. LaPOST isn’t designed for generally healthy adults; it’s for people with diagnoses like end-stage organ disease or advanced dementia where the next emergency is foreseeable.

How to Revoke It

You can cancel your Declaration at any time, regardless of your mental state or competency, using any of three methods:⁸

Destroy the document — tear it, burn it, deface it, or have someone else destroy it in your presence at your direction.
Sign and date a written statement expressing your intent to revoke.
Say so out loud, or communicate it nonverbally.

Whichever method you use, the revocation takes effect when it’s communicated to your attending physician, who must then note the time and date of notification in your medical record.

If you registered the original with the Secretary of State, file a written notice of revocation there as well. The filing fee is $5.00.² Until the registry reflects the revocation, any physician or facility acting in good faith can still rely on the registered Declaration as valid.⁸ Telling your doctor but forgetting to update the registry creates exactly the kind of conflicting instructions you want to avoid.

1
Justia. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 40 RS 40:1151.1 – Definitions
2
Secretary of State of Louisiana. Living Will Declaration Form
3
Louisiana State University Law Center. Louisiana Code 40:1299.58.1 – Declarations Concerning Life-Sustaining Procedures
4
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Revised Statutes RS 40:1151.2 – Making of Declaration
5
Justia. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 40 RS 40:1151.2 – Making of Declaration
6
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Revised Statutes RS 40:1159.4 – Persons Who May Consent to Surgical or Medical Treatment
7
Louisiana Department of Health. State Implements Tool for End-of-Life Care Planning
8
Justia. Louisiana Revised Statutes Title 40 RS 40:1151.3 – Revocation of Declaration