Advance Care Planning
The forms are easy.
The conversations are everything.
I help Arizona people put their wishes into words, get their family on the same page, and make sure the plan can be found when it matters. This is the work almost nobody does until it is too late.
Book a Planning Conversation →The Parts everyone puts off
Most people think advance care planning is a form you fill out once and file away. It is not.
The form is the easy part. Arizona will hand you the living will and the healthcare power of attorney for free. You can download them this afternoon. That was never the hard thing.
The hard thing is the conversation. Knowing what you want when you cannot speak for yourself. Choosing the right person to carry it out, and then telling them. Getting your family to the same page before a crisis, instead of in a hospital hallway at two in the morning, scared and grieving and guessing.
Here is what I see again and again. A directive nobody updated since 1998. A document nobody can find. A daughter named as decision maker who was never once asked what her mother would want. The doctor assumes the family handled it. The family assumes the lawyer handled it. The lawyer did the form and moved on. Nobody owned the part that mattered.
I own that part.
What we do together
This is not a transaction. It is a series of conversations that end with a plan your family can stand on.
We talk about what matters to you. Not a checklist. What a good day looks like. What you would want, and what you would never want. This is the heart of it, and most people have never been asked.
We choose the right person to speak for you. Not the oldest child by default. The person who can carry it out when it is hard.
We complete your Arizona documents correctly. Your living will, your healthcare power of attorney, your mental health power of attorney, and the prehospital directive if it fits. Done right, not guessed at.
We bring your family in. So the person you named is not blindsided, and your other people are not at war over what you would have wanted.
We make sure it can be found. Copies to your doctor, your hospital, your agent, your family, and registered with Arizona's advance directive registry so it can be pulled up when it counts. A plan nobody can find is not a plan.
We keep it current. A death, a diagnosis, a move. We check in once a year so your plan still says what you mean.
If memory is part of the picture
If you or someone you love is facing dementia, the timing changes. There is a window while a person can still tell you what they want, and it closes. As a Certified Dementia Practitioner, I help families plan early, while there is still a voice to honor, and I plan for what cognitive decline asks of a family. Very few people do this work. It is the work I am built for.
How this fits
Advance care planning is one piece of planning for the end with your eyes open. Sometimes it sits next to bigger questions: long-term care, the cost of memory care, what happens when the money runs out. I do not handle the legal or financial strategy myself, but I know the terrain, and I will point you to the right attorney or specialist for the parts I do not do. You will not be guessing who to call.
Understanding ALTCS →A Conversation Can Be the First Step
Do this while it is still an act of love, not a crisis.
Book a planning conversation. We will start with what matters to you, and end with a plan your family can actually use. No pressure, no rush, no jargon.
