N.B.: my understanding is that even if you are estranged from your family, you must either have a spouse (or domestic partner in states which give those rights to domestic partners) or have authorized a durable power of attorney if you don't want your family making those decisions for you.
As for why married people don't have to fill that out, the argument seems to be that married couples have agreed (whether implicitly or explicitly -- note that in my civil wedding, there was language about "in sickness and in health" in the vows, and a large number of [if not "most"] ecclesiastical marriage liturgies have this language too) to care for one another during periods of illness. Absent the existence of a spouse, decision-making responsibility for an incapacitated person passes to the next of kin because it's either that or have the state do it.
In California, at least, the argument for married couples holds for domestic partners, at least for now. It does not hold in Florida, as the Florida electorate voted to have their state refuse to recognise domestic partnerships (which are not established in state law, but are in the laws of a couple of counties and several cities) as having any legal meaning whatsoever.
Now that I think about it, I have no idea whether there's an option for "OH DEAR GOD ANYONE OTHER THAN MY BLOOD RELATIVES." :P
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Date: 2008-11-10 08:24 pm (UTC)As for why married people don't have to fill that out, the argument seems to be that married couples have agreed (whether implicitly or explicitly -- note that in my civil wedding, there was language about "in sickness and in health" in the vows, and a large number of [if not "most"] ecclesiastical marriage liturgies have this language too) to care for one another during periods of illness. Absent the existence of a spouse, decision-making responsibility for an incapacitated person passes to the next of kin because it's either that or have the state do it.
In California, at least, the argument for married couples holds for domestic partners, at least for now. It does not hold in Florida, as the Florida electorate voted to have their state refuse to recognise domestic partnerships (which are not established in state law, but are in the laws of a couple of counties and several cities) as having any legal meaning whatsoever.
Now that I think about it, I have no idea whether there's an option for "OH DEAR GOD ANYONE OTHER THAN MY BLOOD RELATIVES." :P