Utah Living Will Requirements

Utah does not have a legally separate living-will statute. Effective January 1, 2026, the Uniform Health Care Decisions Act (Utah Code Title 75A, Chapter 9) replaced the former Advance Health Care Directive Act (formerly Title 75, Chapter 2a) and creates one combined instrument, the Advance Health Care Directive, covering both a health care instruction (treatment wishes) and a power of attorney for health care (agent designation), together or separately.

The declarant must be an adult with the capacity to understand and communicate a health care decision. Utah presumes an adult has this capacity unless a finding under the current Uniform Health Care Decisions Act's capacity provisions says otherwise.

Under the law in effect since January 1, 2026, execution depends on what the directive contains. A directive that only states health care instructions, with no agent named, needs no witness. A directive that names a health care agent must be signed by the declarant and by one adult witness; Utah's current form offers no notary alternative. This replaces the prior rule of two witnesses or notarization.

If a witness is required because an agent is named, the witness must be an adult who is not the named agent, the agent's spouse, or someone the agent lives with as a couple. If the declarant lives in or receives care at a nursing home, the witness additionally cannot be an employee, contractor, owner, or operator of that home. Current law's disqualification list is shorter than the prior law's, which also excluded blood or marriage relatives, estate and insurance beneficiaries, and health care providers.

Part A of Utah's current Advance Health Care Directive form lets a person name a health care agent and an alternate agent to make health care decisions when the person cannot make or communicate them. This is the agent-designation half of the combined directive, separate from the treatment-wishes content covered on this page; see Utah Healthcare Power of Attorney for full agent-designation guidance.

A declarant may limit the powers granted to a health care agent. Part A of the current statutory form includes a dedicated space for stating any exceptions to the agent's authority; without a stated limitation, the agent may make any health care decision the declarant could have made.

Utah's current statutory form lets a declarant choose to always receive life-sustaining medical treatment, or to withhold it if an incurable condition is expected to cause death soon, if the declarant is permanently unconscious, or if a condition permanently prevents recognizing family and communicating. As of the current form, this general treatment choice is separate from the food-and-liquids-by-tube choice below.

Utah's current statutory form gives comfort care that may shorten life its own dedicated, separately initialed choice: always provide it, never provide it, or provide it only under specific conditions. The prior form addressed this with a single embedded sentence rather than its own standalone election.

Utah's prior Advance Health Care Directive Act suspended a directive's life-sustaining-treatment instructions during the declarant's pregnancy, without affecting an agent designation. That clause was not carried over into the Uniform Health Care Decisions Act that took effect January 1, 2026. The current statutory form makes no mention of pregnancy. As this is a significant change from prior law, you should confirm the current statute if this provision is important to your circumstances.

A declarant may revoke a directive by writing void across it, by destroying or defacing it, by a signed written revocation, or by orally stating an intent to revoke to a qualifying adult witness who signs and dates a document confirming the statement. A later directive supersedes an earlier one to the extent they conflict.

Federal HIPAA regulations govern how a health care agent named in the agent-designation portion of a combined directive can be authorized to access the declarant's protected health information. This authorization supports the agent-decision-maker half of the directive; it does not change the declarant's own treatment-wishes instructions.

Utah's current Advance Health Care Directive form includes a dedicated organ-donation section, letting a declarant authorize or decline donation and specify its purpose, under Utah's Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act.

Utah's current statutory form lets a declarant authorize an agent to admit them as a voluntary patient to a mental health facility for a stated number of days, but only if that authorization is specifically initialed; without it, the agent may not do so. Separately, Utah law recognizes an advance mental health care directive as its own instrument, related to but legally distinct from the general Advance Health Care Directive covered on this page.

A health care provider who in good faith complies with a validly executed Advance Health Care Directive, or with a decision made under one, is immune from civil or criminal liability for that compliance.

A health care provider may decline to comply with a directive that conflicts with the provider's conscience or an institution's policy, but must take reasonable steps to transfer the declarant's care to another provider or institution willing to comply.

Utah's guardianship-of-incapacitated-persons provisions remain codified at Title 75, Chapter 5, Part 3, unaffected by the fiduciaries-title reorganization that moved the Advance Health Care Directive law to Title 75A. A declarant may nominate their health care agent to serve as guardian if a guardianship ever becomes necessary.

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

If a declarant completes only the health care instructions portion of Utah's current Advance Health Care Directive and names no health care agent, no witness signature is required at all. The one-witness requirement applies only when the directive also includes a power of attorney for health care naming an agent.