New Mexico Living Will Requirements

New Mexico does not have a legally separate living-will statute. The Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act creates one instrument, the advance health-care directive, defined as either an individual instruction (treatment wishes), a power of attorney for health care (agent designation), or both together, most often executed on the state's own optional form.

You must be an adult or emancipated minor (age sixteen to eighteen who is married, on active duty, or court-declared emancipated) and have capacity, meaning the ability to understand and appreciate the nature and consequences of proposed health care and to communicate a decision, to give an individual instruction. Capacity itself is defined at Section 24-7A-1(C); a lack-of-capacity determination is made under the separate process in Section 24-7A-11, not Section 24-7A-2 alone.

A written directive needs only your own signature and date; the law does not require notarization or witnesses at all. The Section 24-7A-4 optional form itself calls two witnesses recommended, not required, so signing before a notary or having witnesses is a choice, never a validity condition.

If you choose to use witnesses, though it is not required, New Mexico law sets no qualification or disqualification list for them: nothing bars a health care provider, a facility employee, or your named agent from serving as a witness, unlike states that maintain such a list.

New Mexico treats revocation of your treatment-wishes instructions differently from revocation of your agent's authority. You may revoke your treatment instructions at any time, in any manner that communicates your intent to revoke (Section 24-7A-3(B)). Revoking your agent's designation requires a signed writing or personally informing your health care provider (Section 24-7A-3(A)), and if you cannot sign yourself, the revocation must instead be signed for you and witnessed by two people signing in your presence and each other's.

New Mexico's statute does not define or use the terms terminal condition, irreversible coma, or persistent vegetative state anywhere. The actual trigger language, found only in the Section 24-7A-4 optional form, gives a three-way choice once you are unable to make or communicate decisions and either have an incurable or irreversible condition expected to cause death within a relatively short time, become permanently unconscious, or face treatment whose risks and burdens would outweigh its benefits: choose not to prolong life, choose to prolong life, or let your named agent decide.

Regardless of the life-sustaining treatment choices you make, New Mexico's optional form directs that the best medical care possible be provided to keep you clean, comfortable, and free of pain or discomfort at all times, even if that care hastens your death.

If you choose not to prolong life, New Mexico's optional form requires you to specify your wishes on artificial nutrition and artificial hydration as two separate initialed choices, not one combined election. This is more granular than most states' forms, which typically address artificial nutrition and hydration together as a single item. The requirement to initial these choices separately is found in the state's optional form at Section 24-7A-4.

The Living Will may include an anatomical gift designation, which New Mexico's optional Section 24-7A-4 form implements directly in Part 2. New Mexico's anatomical gift statute is the Jonathan Spradling Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which runs through Section 24-6B-26. Section 24-6B-21 specifically addresses the effect of an anatomical gift on an advance health-care directive.

Federal HIPAA regulations govern how your health care agent can be authorized to access your protected health information once the agent-designation portion of your directive is in effect. This authorization supports the agent-decision-maker half of your directive; it does not change or expand your own treatment-wishes instructions.

An advance directive, durable power of attorney for health care decisions, living will, right-to-die statement, or similar document executed in another state or jurisdiction in compliance with that jurisdiction's law is valid and enforceable in New Mexico to the same extent as if properly made here.

Section 24-7A-2(B) also lets you name a health care agent within the same directive. That is a separate function from the living-will/treatment-wishes instruction covered on this page: naming an agent gives someone else decision-making authority, rather than stating your own wishes directly. For full agent-designation guidance, see New Mexico Healthcare Power of Attorney.

Unless related to you, your agent may not be an owner, operator, or employee of a health care institution where you are receiving care (Section 24-7A-2(B)). Separately, the Act does not let an agent consent to your admission to a mental health care facility unless your written directive expressly permits presenting you for evaluation (Section 24-7A-13(E)). This is agent-designation content; for full guidance, see New Mexico Healthcare Power of Attorney.

New Mexico's optional form lets you name up to two alternate agents, who step in if your first-choice agent is unwilling, unable, or not reasonably available to serve. This is agent-designation content; for full guidance on this, see New Mexico Healthcare Power of Attorney.

A health care provider or institution must comply with your individual instructions made while you had capacity, unless the provider objects for reasons of conscience or the institution has a timely-communicated policy based on conscience, or the requested care would be medically ineffective or contrary to generally accepted health care standards.

If a health care provider or institution declines to comply with your instructions, it must promptly inform you or your representative, continue your care until a transfer can be arranged, and make all reasonable efforts to transfer you to a provider or institution willing to comply, unless you refuse that assistance.

Federal law requires Medicare- and Medicaid-participating hospitals, nursing homes, and other facilities to inform patients in writing of their right under New Mexico law to make an advance directive, including stating their own treatment wishes.

Unlike the Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act, which does not let an agent consent to your admission to a mental health care facility without express authorization, New Mexico has a separate, genuinely voluntary Mental Health Care Treatment Decisions Act letting you make your own advance instructions specifically about mental health treatment, including medications, therapies, and hospitalization, through its own advance directive mechanism distinct from the health care directive covered on this page.

New Mexico does not operate a state registry for advance health-care directives. There is nothing to file with a state office for your directive to be valid or accessible. Keep the signed original yourself and give copies to your physician, any other health care providers, and anyone you have named as agent or alternate agent.