Free Living Will Forms

Updated: Nov 3, 2026

This form is best prepared before it is needed. It speaks for you if an accident, a stroke or a serious illness leaves you unconscious or unable to communicate, and the people at your bedside have to decide whether to start, continue or stop life support.

Living wills are most often associated with older adults and people managing a chronic or serious medical condition. Writing your choices down early still helps at any age, because a sudden accident gives no warning.

Naming a trusted decision-maker ahead of time protects your loved ones from having to guess at difficult medical choices on your behalf.

Living wills are available from family doctors, individual health care professionals, and lawyers. You can also get one online. Our site provides free living will PDF templates you can use right away, plus a step-by-step form builder for a customizable, printable document.

Free Living Will Examples

A living will example shows how a finished document reads: who is making it, when it applies, which treatments the person accepts or refuses, which comfort care they want, and who signs it at the end.

The samples below use made-up names and choices. Read them to see the wording, then write your own choices in our template or form builder. None of them is a recommendation about what you should choose.

Example: Comfort Care Only

This sample suits someone who wants no machines or tube feeding at the end of life, only relief from pain.

Example: Try Treatment First, Then Stop

This sample suits someone who wants a fair chance at recovery but no long stay on machines if recovery does not come.

Example: Full Treatment

This sample suits someone who wants everything done to keep them alive, for medical, personal or religious reasons.

Official Sample Forms Printed in Statutes

Some legislatures print a sample declaration or advance directive in the statute itself, and these are free examples too:

• California prints a statutory Advance Health Care Directive form (Cal. Prob. Code § 4701).
• Georgia prints an advance directive for health care form in four parts (Ga. Code Ann. § 31-32-4).
• Hawaii prints an optional advance health-care directive form (Haw. Rev. Stat. § 327E-16).
• Louisiana prints an illustrative declaration form (La. Rev. Stat. § 40:1151.2).
• Pennsylvania prints a form that combines a health care power of attorney and a living will (20 Pa.C.S. § 5471).
• South Carolina prints a declaration of a desire for a natural death (S.C. Code Ann. § 44-77-50).
• South Dakota prints a living will declaration form (S.D. Codified Laws § 34-12D-3).

Maryland's advance directive form says that using it is completely optional and that other forms are also valid in Maryland (Md. Code, Health-Gen. § 5-603).

Living Will Format: What to Include

A living will format follows a similar order on most forms: your identification, a declaration of intent, the conditions that put it into effect, your treatment choices, other wishes, an optional health care agent, and the signing section.

Each part has one job:

• Identification: your full name, date of birth and home address.
• Declaration of intent: a line saying you make the document freely and of sound mind.
• Conditions: when it applies, such as a terminal illness or permanent unconsciousness.
• Treatment choices: yes or no for each life-prolonging treatment.
• Comfort care: pain relief and other care you always want.
• Other wishes: faith, place of death, visitors, organ donation.
• Health care agent: the person who speaks for you, if you name one.
• Signing section: your signature and date, plus the signers your jurisdiction's rules call for.

A blank form gives you these parts as fill-in lines and checkboxes. Our printable template follows the same order, so you can use the examples above as a guide while you complete it.

What a Living Will Covers

A living will covers the medical decisions made at the end of life: whether to use life support, whether to start or stop other life-sustaining treatment, what comfort care you want, and any personal or religious wishes about your care.

Health care professionals in Delaware must comply with a health-care instruction you give, subject to the exceptions in subsections (f) and (g) of 16 Del. C. § 2521 (16 Del. C. § 2521(e)).

Life Support

Life support is any machine or medical practice that keeps a person alive when their body cannot do the work alone. It is often used when no one can yet tell whether the person will recover.

Life support commonly includes:

• Mechanical ventilation to assist or replace breathing
• Artificial nutrition and hydration, such as a feeding tube
• Dialysis for kidney failure
• CPR and other resuscitation efforts

Your document can say whether you want life support:

• Continued as long as doctors can provide it
• Continued only for a set period, then stopped if you do not improve
• Withheld or stopped if you are not expected to wake up

Life-Sustaining Treatment

Life-sustaining treatment is care that keeps you alive without curing the illness, including the life support described above. Your form can also cover other treatments, such as major surgery, an amputation or an experimental therapy. Such treatment can be painful, costly or hard on your quality of life if you survive.

The form lets you say which of these you accept. An older adult who is already very ill may decline surgery that would add only weeks, while a younger person may want every option tried.

Comfort Care

Comfort care keeps you free of pain and distress without trying to cure the illness. Many people who refuse life support still want pain medicine, oxygen for comfort and hospice care, and the document can say so in plain words.

End-of-Life Wishes

End-of-life wishes are personal requests about how you are treated in your last days. Many rest on faith: a prayer, a visit from clergy, a ritual, or a wish to die at home.

Writing them down helps doctors and nurses avoid acts that would go against your beliefs.

Organ Donation

The document can also say whether you want to donate your organs and tissues. Some people want any usable organ given to help others; others decline so their body stays whole for burial or a memorial.

Living Will Signing Requirements by State

Signing rules differ by jurisdiction, and West Virginia, for example, calls for two or more witnesses and a notary public (W. Va. Code § 16-30-4).

The table gives the rule for each jurisdiction in our sources, with the section of code behind it and any condition the rule carries. California and North Carolina are not listed because our sources hold no verified count of witnesses or notary rule for them yet; check their own statutes before you sign.

Several rows come from an optional form printed in the code or from the rules for a health care proxy or patient advocate designation, and the row says so.

Many of the same sections also limit who can act as a witness, as in Florida, where one of the two subscribing witnesses is neither your spouse nor a blood relative (Fla. Stat. § 765.302), and California, where each witness signs a declaration under penalty of perjury (Cal. Prob. Code § 4674).

How to Create a Living Will

Creating a living will comes down to deciding which treatments you want, choosing a person to speak for you, and completing and signing the form the way your jurisdiction's rules call for.

Give yourself time. Many people find these choices hard, and a weekend spent reading about the treatments and talking with family saves you from rewriting the document later.

Think About What to Include

Start with your health and your values. Someone in good health may choose differently from someone facing a chronic or terminal illness, and your faith may shape your answers on life support, organ donation and last rites.

Talking with your doctor helps here: they can explain what each treatment involves and how likely it is to help in your situation.

Choose Your End-of-Life Wishes and Treatments

Go through each treatment on the form, such as resuscitation, a breathing machine, tube feeding and dialysis, and write down a yes, a no or a time limit for each one. Then add any wishes about comfort care, where you want to spend your last days, and your funeral or last rites.

Select Your Health Care Agent

A health care agent carries out the wishes in your document and talks to your doctors when you cannot. Pick someone you trust completely, who knows your values and can stay calm under pressure.

Some codes limit who can serve. In Georgia, a physician or health care provider who is directly involved in your health care may not serve as your health care agent (O.C.G.A. § 31-32-4). In Michigan, the patient advocate is an individual 18 years of age or older (Mich. Comp. Laws § 700.5506).

Complete and Sign the Living Will Form

Fill in the form with your final choices, read it through once more, and sign and date it in front of the people your jurisdiction's rules call for. The table above shows who that is where you live.

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Steps to Fill Out a Living Will Form

To fill out a living will form, read the general information, enter your name and details, mark your treatment choices, add your end-of-life wishes, name your agent, and complete the signing section. These steps follow our PDF template and form builder.

Review the General Information

The form opens with a short explanation of what the document does, usually a few paragraphs up to a page. It also describes your rights and the authority you can give your agent.

Read it through, make sure you understand it, then move on.

Fill In Your Declaration

The declaration is the part where you identify yourself and confirm you are making the document by choice. Enter your:

• Name
• Age
• Date
• Primary residence

These details show that you are filling out this document voluntarily, for the purposes described in the first section.

Mark Your Health Care Decisions

The health care section lists life-prolonging and life-sustaining treatments with a box or a line beside each one. On our form, your initials beside a treatment mean you do not want it given to you if you are incapacitated.

Read each item slowly, initial the ones you refuse, and leave the rest blank.

Set Out Your End-of-Life Decisions

The end-of-life section lists conditions, such as a terminal illness or permanent unconsciousness, under which you do not want your life prolonged by medicine or machines. Initial each condition that applies to your wishes.

Most forms include a line saying you are of sound mind when you sign. Georgia, for example, lets any person of sound mind who is emancipated or 18 years of age or older make an advance directive (O.C.G.A. § 31-32-5).

Many forms leave space at the end of the section for extra instructions. Use it for anything the checkboxes miss, such as comfort care, faith or wishes about your remains.

Name Your Medical Power of Attorney

The agent section names the person who decides for you if you cannot. Your name goes first, as the principal, then the details of your agent:

• Name
• Address
• Phone Number

Some forms let you name a second agent who steps in if the first cannot serve. Fill in the same details for that person if you use it.

The rest of the section lists the decisions your agent can make and usually cancels any earlier health care power of attorney or living will you signed.

Complete the Signing Section

The signing section is where you print your name, sign and date it. In California, the statutory form tells you to sign and date the form at the end (Cal. Prob. Code § 4701).

Each signer's block asks for a printed name, address, signature and date.

In California, each witness also signs a declaration under penalty of perjury, and at least one witness signs a further declaration about not being related to you or entitled to your estate (Cal. Prob. Code § 4674).

Where a notary may take the place of witnesses, as in Tennessee (Tenn. Code Ann. § 68-11-1803), the notary completes the notary acknowledgment section at the end of the form.

Living Will vs Other Documents

A living will covers only your medical treatment wishes near the end of life, which sets it apart from a living trust, a DNR order, a medical power of attorney and a last will, even though their names sound alike.

Living Will vs Living Trust

A living trust holds your property, not your medical wishes. You move assets into the trust, a trustee manages them, and the trust pays out to beneficiaries, who are often you during your lifetime.

Most living trusts name a successor trustee who takes over if you can no longer manage your affairs. After your death, the successor trustee distributes the assets or keeps the trust running, as its terms say.

The link between the two documents is incapacity. The first guides your medical care when you cannot decide; the trust keeps your finances running in the same situation.

Living Will vs Advance Directive

A living will is one type of advance directive, but not every advance directive is a living will. An advance directive can also name a health care agent or combine both jobs in one document.

California's statutory form, for example, lets you give instructions about your own health care and name someone else to make health care decisions for you (Cal. Prob. Code § 4701). Pennsylvania's statutory form combines a health care power of attorney and a living will (20 Pa.C.S. § 5471).

Living Will vs DNR

A DNR form is a “do not resuscitate” order, and that’s it. A DNR does not specify whether doctors should insert feeding tubes or perform any other life extension techniques.

A DNR tells emergency crews and hospital staff not to attempt CPR, chest compressions or a defibrillator if your heart or breathing stops. It says nothing about a breathing machine, tube feeding, surgery or medicine, so doctors may still give those.

A DNR is usually arranged with your doctor. Your document can include a wish not to be resuscitated alongside your other treatment choices.

Living Will vs Medical Power of Attorney

A medical power of attorney names a person to make health care decisions for you, while a living will gives the decisions themselves in writing. A health care proxy is another name for the same role.

The two work well together: the living will covers the situations you can foresee, and your agent decides the ones you cannot. You can name an agent inside a combined form or in a separate document; see our guide to how a power of attorney is distinct from a living will.

Some codes treat the agent document on its own. In New York, this rule covers only a health care proxy appointing a health care agent: a competent adult signs and dates the proxy in the presence of two adult witnesses, who also sign it (N.Y. Pub. Health Law § 2981).

Living Will vs Last Will

A last will and a living will sound alike but do very different jobs. A last will says what happens to your property and who cares for any minor children after you die. A living will only states your medical treatment wishes while you are alive but unable to communicate them. Most people benefit from having both documents rather than treating one as a substitute for the other.

Storing, Sharing and Changing a Living Will

The document only helps if the people treating you can find it, so keep copies with your doctor, your health care agent and at home, and update every copy whenever you change your choices.

Where to Keep Copies

Keep your living will in a few good locations so it can be found when it is needed. If only you know where the document is, even a trusted health care agent cannot produce it when a medical professional asks.

Give a copy to your doctor's office, another to your health care agent, and keep the original at home where your family can reach it. If an attorney helped you draft it, they can hold a copy too.

In Alaska and Maine, the optional statutory form says a copy has the same effect as the original, for a directive made on that form (Alaska Stat. § 13.52.300; Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 18-C, § 5-805).

Telling Your Doctor

Your doctor can only follow a document they know about. In Indiana, the declarant shall notify the attending physician of the existence of the declaration (Ind. Code § 16-36-4-8). In Missouri, it is the declarant's responsibility to provide for that notice (Mo. Rev. Stat. § 459.015).

Changing or Revoking a Living Will

A living will can be changed or revoked while you have capacity: in Maine, an individual with capacity may revoke all or part of an advance health care directive, other than the designation of an agent, at any time and in any manner that communicates an intent to revoke (Me. Rev. Stat. tit. 18-C, § 5-804).

Delaware accepts any act that clearly shows the intent to revoke, including an oral statement to a health-care professional (16 Del. C. § 2515(b)).

In Nevada, a revocation is effective upon its communication to the attending physician or other provider of health care by the declarant or a witness to the revocation (Nev. Rev. Stat. § 449A.445(1)). In Georgia, if you are receiving care in a health care facility, a revocation becomes effective only upon communication to the attending physician (O.C.G.A. § 31-32-6).

To change your choices, make a new document, sign it the same way as the first, and give the new version to everyone who held the old one. Ask them to destroy the old copies so no one relies on them by mistake.

A divorce can change who speaks for you: in New Jersey, naming your spouse as health care representative is revoked upon divorce or legal separation (N.J.S.A. 26:2H-57(c)).

Below are short answers to what people ask most about these forms and how they work.

General information, not legal or tax advice.