C.R.S. § 15-18-101 et seq. · § 15-14-506 · Colorado
Colorado: how to sign your advance directive
Colorado runs four instruments across three articles, and the newest fact about them is a repeal.
Why WearableDocs
In Colorado, 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 Colorado asks
What you need to sign in Colorado
- Instruments
- Four — declaration (art. 18) · medical durable power of attorney (§15-14-506) · CPR directive (art. 18.6) · MOST form (art. 18.7). A declaration "may be combined with a medical power of attorney to create a single document" (§15-18-104(7))
- Form
- No statutory declaration form — repealed. §15-18-104(2) was repealed by SB 21-193, effective 7 September 2021. The medical DPOA has no prescribed form. The CPR directive's required contents are set by protocol under §15-18.6-103 and the MOST form's by §15-18.7-103
- Execution
- Declaration: two witnesses OR a notary (§15-18-106(1)). Medical durable power of attorney: no execution formality at all — §15-14-506 imposes none
- May not witness
- On a declaration, the people who may not sign for a declarant under §15-18-105: the attending physician or any other physician; an employee of the attending physician or of the health care facility where the declarant is a patient; a person with a claim against the estate; a person who knows or believes they are an estate beneficiary or heir at law. They may not witness, notarise, or take the acknowledgment either (§15-18-106(2))
- May not be your agent
- None. Colorado imposes no agent restriction on the medical durable power of attorney. An agent may not consent to or refuse treatment over the principal's objection (§15-14-506(4)(a))
- Copy rule
- None found for the declaration or the medical DPOA. For the MOST form, a photocopy, fax or other electronic reproduction "shall be given the same force and effect as the original form signed by the physician, advanced practice registered nurse, or physician assistant" (§15-18.7-104(5))
- Delivery
- No — the directive does not wait on delivery to a clinician to operate. §15-18-104(1) puts the job of getting a declaration to the attending physician or APRN "for entry in the declarant's medical record" on "the declarant or someone acting for the declarant"
- Who decides
- Two physicians. The attending physician must order an examination by one other physician; both must find a terminal condition or persistent vegetative state and lack of decisional capacity, and certify it in writing in the medical record (§15-18-107). If no challenge is filed within 48 hours of the certification, the physician must then withhold or withdraw
- Trigger overridable
- Yes, in part. A declaration's trigger is set by statute — a terminal condition or persistent vegetative state plus lack of decisional capacity (§15-18-104(1)). A medical DPOA "may include any directive, condition, or limitation of an agent's authority" (§15-14-506(1)), and the declarant may write that the agent may override the declaration (§15-18-112(4))
- Registry
- None
- Age
- 18 (§15-18-103(1), §15-14-505(1))
- Reciprocity
- Yes — a declaration executed in compliance with the law of the state where it was executed is effective in Colorado "to the extent that such declaration does not violate any laws of the state of Colorado" (§15-18-108(6)); a medical DPOA executed in another state is presumed to comply and "may, in good faith, be relied upon" (§15-14-509(2))
- Pregnancy
- None found in art. 18
- Revocation
- Declaration: orally, in writing, or by burning, tearing, cancelling, obliterating or destroying it (§15-18-109). Medical DPOA: a subsequent divorce, dissolution, annulment or legal separation automatically revokes a spouse's appointment as agent unless the directive expressly provides otherwise; the rest of the instrument survives (§15-14-506(5)(c))
- Oral instructions
- A declaration is a written document (§15-18-103(8)) and may be revoked orally (§15-18-109)
- Provider may not require
- Yes — §15-18-111: no insurer or provider "shall require any person to execute a declaration as a condition of being insured for or receiving health-care services", and failing to execute one may not raise a premium
- Carried device
- A CPR directive or a MOST form — never the declaration and never the medical DPOA. §15-18.6-104(1), §15-18.7-104(1)(a)
- Citation
- C.R.S. § 15-18-101 et seq. · § 15-14-506
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What Colorado actually recognizes
The declaration — Colorado's living will — is article 18, the Colorado Medical Treatment Decision Act (§15-18-101). The medical durable power of attorney is §15-14-506, inside the Colorado Patient Autonomy Act at §§15-14-503 to -509. The CPR directive is article 18.6. The MOST form — medical orders for scope of treatment — is article 18.7.
Then §15-18-104(2), the subsection that carried the statutory declaration form, was repealed: the source note reads "(2) repealed, (SB 21-193), ch. 433, p. 2859, § 2, effective September 7." That is the 2021 session, and it means a Colorado declaration has no prescribed text at all. The state withdrew the form and left the instrument.
The two halves also fail in opposite directions on execution. A declaration needs two witnesses or an acknowledgment (§15-18-106(1)). The medical durable power of attorney has no execution formality whatsoever — §15-14-506 requires no witness, no notary, no particular words. The instrument that names the decision-maker is the easier one to sign, and the one whose signature nothing verifies.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for Colorado
"Use the Colorado statutory declaration form." There is no longer one. §15-18-104(2), the subsection that carried it, was repealed by SB 21-193, effective 7 September 2021. Forms and generators still circulating a "Colorado statutory living will" are reproducing text the state withdrew four years ago — and the risk is not cosmetic. A document built to match a repealed form is being checked against a rule that no longer governs it.
"Get your medical power of attorney witnessed — or notarised." Neither. §15-14-506 imposes no execution formality at all on the medical durable power of attorney: no witnesses, no notary, no mandated wording, no prescribed paper. A Colorado medical DPOA does its work on the principal's signature. Someone who was told their signed instrument was invalid because it was not witnessed was told the opposite of what the statute says.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in Colorado
Colorado is a carried-device state — for the CPR directive and the MOST form, and for nothing else. Both provisions are worth reading in full, because both turn on a phrase this page should not paraphrase.
Emergency medical service personnel, health-care providers, and health-care facilities "shall comply with a person's CPR directive that is apparent and immediately available." (§15-18.6-104(1))
Emergency medical service personnel, a health-care provider, or a health-care facility "shall comply with an adult's executed medical orders for scope of treatment form that: (I) Has been executed in this state or another state; (II) Is apparent and immediately available; and (III) Reasonably satisfies the requirements of a medical orders for scope of treatment form specified in section 15-18.7-103." (§15-18.7-104(1)(a))
"Apparent and immediately available" is the whole doctrine. It is not a copy rule and it is not an identity rule; it is a rule about whether the thing is there. Colorado also builds the presumption in the other direction: "In the absence of a CPR directive, a person's consent to CPR shall be presumed." (§15-18.6-104(3))
Neither provision reaches the directive. The declaration and the medical durable power of attorney get no bracelet, no necklace, no medallion and no facsimile rule. What the declaration gets is a duty placed on the person who signed it: §15-18-104(1) makes it "the responsibility of the declarant or someone acting for the declarant to provide the declaration to the attending physician or advanced practice registered nurse for entry in the declarant's medical record." Add §15-18-107's two-physician certification and its 48-hour challenge window and the shape is clear: the declaration has to arrive, and then it has to survive two signatures and two days. A directive does not bind EMS on CPR — that is what the CPR directive is for.