March 31, 2012 marked the seventh anniversary of the death
of Terri Schiavo, the 41-year-old who succumbed after her feeding tube was
removed as part of a very public legal battle between her husband and parents.
As you may recall, Terri Schiavo was in a coma for nearly 15
years after she suffered cardiac arrest and sustained a brain injury. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, alleged that
his wife would not want to live in her incapacitated state; she had no written instructions
in place.
Her parents, on the other hand, suspected that Michael had
something to do with Terri’s collapse and argued that she valued life and would
have chosen to be sustained. As you also
recall, the Florida Legislature, then-Gov. Jeb Bush, and then Congress and
President George W. Bush all intervened in this legal battle. While no one will
ever know Terri’s desires, we can safely assume that she would not have wanted
the acrimony that her condition created between her husband and parents.
The Terri Schiavo story highlights the critical need for
clear instructions as to health care when the patient is unable to make those
decisions for him or herself. A recent New York Times Editorial highlights a
2006 Pew
Research Center poll , wherein only “22 percent [of respondents] said a
doctor should always try to save a patient’s life, while 70 percent believed
that patients should sometimes be allowed to die. More than half said they
would tell their doctor to end treatment if they were in great pain with no
hope of improvement.”
Notwithstanding these numbers, surprisingly “only 69 percent
had discussed end-of-life care with a spouse; just 17 percent, or 40 percent of
those over 65, had done so with their children.” Furthermore, only “one-third
of Americans had a living will and even fewer have taken the more legally
enforceable measure of appointing a health care proxy to act on their behalf if
they cannot act for themselves.”
These statistics are particularly disturbing given that in
less than 20 years there will be more than 8.5 million Americans over 85 — and
roughly half will suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or some other form of dementia.
(The full New York Times Editorial is
available online at Given that we are all likely to suffer from some
form of disability during our lifetimes it is critical that we think through
these issues carefully and that we prepare the legal documents necessary to
effectuate our desires – so that our desires will be carried out even if we are
unable to express them ourselves. This
is one area where the help of estate planning counsel who focuses on
these issues is especially critical.
