AS 13.52 · Alaska
Alaska: how to sign your advance directive
Alaska keeps both halves of the instrument in one chapter, AS 13.52, which the last section names: "This chapter may be cited as the Health Care Decisions Act." The chapter creates two things and joins them under one term. §13.52.390(1): "advance health care directive" means an individual instruction or a durable power of attorney for health care.
Why WearableDocs
In Alaska, the directive has to be found
It does not wait on delivery to a clinician to operate — but a document no one can produce when asked for is a document that fails in practice. WearableDocs puts the signed directive on a card you carry and a page that opens in seconds, instead of a phone call to whoever might know which drawer.
You answer a few questions — your name, your state, and what you refuse — and WearableDocs builds the directive. Print it, sign it, upload it. Changing your answers later is part of the plan, so nothing is locked in.
What Alaska asks
What you need to sign in Alaska
- Instruments
- Individual instruction (may be oral) and a durable power of attorney for health care — one chapter, either or both. A written directive may also nominate a guardian (§13.52.010(j))
- Form
- Illustrative — a sample form at §13.52.300, which says it "may be modified to suit the needs of the person, or a different form that complies with this chapter may be used"
- Execution
- Two witnesses personally known to the principal OR acknowledgment before a notary public at a place in this state (§13.52.010(b))
- May not witness
- A health care provider employed at the institution or facility where the principal is receiving care; an employee of that provider or facility; the agent. At least one of the two must be unrelated by blood, marriage or adoption and not an estate beneficiary (§13.52.010(d), (e))
- May not be your agent
- An owner, operator or employee of the health care institution where the principal is receiving care, unless related by blood, marriage or adoption (§13.52.010(c))
- Copy rule
- A copy has the same effect as the original (§13.52.110)
- Delivery
- No — the directive does not wait on delivery to a clinician to operate. A provider who knows a directive exists must record it, "shall request a copy if it is in writing", and keep it in the health care record (§13.52.060(b))
- Who decides
- The primary physician — and a court in the case of mental illness, unless the situation is an emergency (§13.52.010(g))
- Trigger overridable
- Yes — an instruction "may be limited to take effect only if a specified condition arises" (§13.52.010(a)); the agent's authority begins on incapacity "[u]nless otherwise specified" (§13.52.010(f))
- Registry
- None
- Age
- 18
- Reciprocity
- Yes — a directive made in compliance with another state's laws is valid under this chapter if it complies with this chapter (§13.52.010(k)); out-of-state DNR orders and identification are valid (§13.52.150)
- Pregnancy
- Yes — a directive may not be given effect to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining procedures from a pregnant woman who lacks capacity where death is likely and the fetus could develop to live birth (§13.52.055(b)). The section does not apply to emergency services in the field (§13.52.055(c))
- Revocation
- The agent designation only by a signed writing or by personally informing the supervising provider (§13.52.020(a)). An annulment, divorce, dissolution or legal separation revokes a former spouse's designation as agent unless the decree or the directive says otherwise (§13.52.020(e))
- Oral instructions
- Yes — "the instruction may be oral or written" (§13.52.010(a))
- Uninitialled box
- On the sample form, the box that makes the agent's authority effective immediately. Left unmarked, the default holds: authority begins only on a determination of incapacity (§13.52.010(f), form ¶(3))
- Provider may not require
- Yes — §13.52.130: a provider, institution, plan, insurer or hospital plan "may not require an individual to execute a health care directive, obtain a do not resuscitate order from a physician, or possess do not resuscitate identification" as a condition of receiving or being insured for care
- Carried device
- DNR identification — the DNR order, never the directive. §13.52.065(c)
- Citation
- AS 13.52
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What Alaska actually recognizes
The instruction half is where Alaska differs from nearly everyone. §13.52.010(a) lets an adult give an individual instruction, and it "may be oral or written." A spoken direction to a provider is a statutory instrument in Alaska.
The chapter also refuses to make you choose. §13.52.010(l) says an individual instruction that would be valid by itself stays valid even when it sits in a writing that also contains a durable power of attorney for health care that fails the chapter's witnessing requirements. The state's own form runs the two together in five parts — agent, instructions, anatomical gift, mental health treatment, primary physician — but the statute does not require the combination, and it protects the instruction when the combination goes wrong.
One more thing sits in the chapter and does not belong to the directive: a do-not-resuscitate identification regime at §13.52.065. That is a separate order for a separate instrument. It is dealt with below.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for Alaska
"Two witnesses, or a notary — either route, anywhere." In Alaska the notary route has a location requirement: §13.52.010(b)(2) requires the directive to be "acknowledged before a notary public at a place in this state." A signing ceremony notarised outside Alaska does not satisfy it.
The witness route is narrower than "two adults" as well. §13.52.010(b)(1) requires witnesses who are personally known by the principal, and §13.52.010(e) requires at least one of the two to be unrelated by blood, marriage or adoption and not entitled to any part of the estate. Two friends of a friend will not do.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in Alaska
Alaska gives a carried device real force — and it reaches the do-not-resuscitate order, not the directive.
The department "shall develop standardized designs and symbols for do not resuscitate identification cards, forms, necklaces, and bracelets that signify, when carried or worn, that the carrier or wearer is an individual for whom a physician … has issued a do not resuscitate order." (§13.52.065(c))
That is a statute describing a worn object by what it does. §13.52.390(12) defines a do-not-resuscitate identification in the same terms, and §13.52.065(d) requires a health care provider to comply with the adopted protocol "when the health care provider is presented with a do not resuscitate identification."
Say the boundary out loud, because it is the whole point. All of that belongs to the DNR order — an order a physician, an advanced practice registered nurse or a physician assistant issues for a qualified patient (§13.52.065(a)). It does not belong to an advance health care directive, and nothing in AS 13.52 gives a directive force because it is carried or worn.
What Alaska gives the directive instead is copy-equivalence: "A copy of a written advance health care directive, revocation of an advance health care directive, or designation or disqualification of an agent or a surrogate has the same effect as the original." (§13.52.110) So the instrument is not waiting on an original, and a wallet copy is the document. The card's work here is getting a copy in front of a provider who is obliged to record it and request it (§13.52.060(b)) — and it does not bind EMS on CPR, which is the DNR order's separate job.