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 Durable Power of Attorney For Healthcare In general legal terms when you want a person to act for you, you can create a power of attorney. Depending upon what scope of authority you give to the person you appoint to act for you, the Power of Attorney can be limited or general. Usually a power of Attorney is appointed to act for another person in their business or financial affairs. Recently, however, state laws have begun to recognize the need for "agents" to act for people in making healthcare decisions when these persons may not be able to act for themselves. As an example, if you were in a car accident and were in a coma, but your doctors felt the coma was temporary. This might be a situation in which such a document might seriously assist in the managing of your health decisions. A Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare is a legal document, created by you, which allows you to designate a person to make certain decisions for you regarding your medical care, if you cannot make those decisions yourself. Generally, when you prepare a Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare, you are appointing a "healthcare agent." When you make such a document, you are making a formal designation of an agent to deal with all medical situations which may arise when you cannot speak for yourself.
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