Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-570 et seq. · Connecticut
Connecticut: how to sign your advance directive
Connecticut lets the declarant choose which instrument to file. §19a-570(1): "'Advance health care directive' or 'advance directive' means a writing executed in accordance with the provisions of this chapter, including, but not limited to, a living will, or an appointment of health care representative, or both." Three statutory forms sit behind that sentence: §19a-575 for instructions and the withdrawal of life support, §19a-575a for the combined document — instructions, representative, conservator designation and anatomical gift — and §19a-577 for the representative alone.
Why WearableDocs
In Connecticut, a signed directive in a drawer is not enough
The statute makes delivery — or getting the document into the medical record — part of what switches the directive on. A relative who might know which drawer is not a plan. WearableDocs stores the document you signed and puts it on a page that opens when someone scans your card, so the person who needs it can build the record while there is still time.
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 Connecticut asks
What you need to sign in Connecticut
- Instruments
- A living will (§19a-575, §19a-575a), an appointment of health care representative (§19a-576, §19a-577), or both in one document (§19a-570(1))
- Form
- Illustrative — the documents "may be in substantially the following form" (§19a-575, §19a-575a); the representative form "may, but need not be, in substantially the following form" (§19a-577)
- Execution
- Two witnesses, no notary — signed and dated by the maker "with at least two witnesses" (§19a-575); signed and dated "in the presence of two adult witnesses who shall also sign the document" (§19a-576(a))
- May not witness
- Only the health care representative. §19a-576(a): "The person appointed as representative shall not act as witness to the execution of such document or sign such document." Separately, residents of facilities operated or licensed by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services or the Department of Developmental Services must have one witness unaffiliated with the facility and one specialised clinician (§19a-576(b), (c))
- May not be your agent
- An operator, administrator or employee of a hospital, residential care home, rest home with nursing supervision or chronic and convalescent nursing home, for anyone who is a patient or resident of, or has applied to, that facility — unless related by blood, marriage or adoption. An administrator or employee of a government agency financially responsible for your medical care (§19a-576(d)). A physician or APRN may not be both your representative and your attending practitioner (§19a-576(e))
- Copy rule
- Reliance, not equivalence — "Any party receiving a duly executed copy or facsimile of this document may rely upon it unless such party has received actual notice of my revocation of it." (§19a-575a)
- Delivery
- Yes — furnishing is one of two operative conditions. §19a-579: the document "becomes operative when (1) the document is furnished to the attending physician or advanced practice registered nurse, and (2) the declarant is determined … to be incapacitated." A provider furnished with a copy "shall make it a part of the declarant's medical record" (§19a-578(b))
- Who decides
- One attending physician or advanced practice registered nurse (§19a-579). The determination must be disclosed in writing on the representative's request (§19a-579)
- Registry
- None
- Age
- 18 (§19a-575, §19a-575a, §19a-576, §19a-577)
- Reciprocity
- Yes — health care instructions or an appointment of a health care proxy executed under the law of another state or a foreign country, and not contrary to Connecticut public policy, are "deemed validly executed" (§19a-580g). A provider may rely on them on a court order, on a notarised statement from the patient, or on "the healthcare provider's own good faith legal analysis" (§19a-580g)
- Pregnancy
- No carve-out — §19a-574 was repealed effective 24 May 2018. The forms put the choice to the declarant instead: "(1) I intend to accept life support systems if my doctor believes that doing so would allow my fetus to reach a live birth. (2) I intend this document to apply without modifications." (§19a-575, §19a-575a)
- Revocation
- A living will may be revoked "at any time and in any manner" (§19a-579a(a)). An appointment of health care representative "may only be revoked by the declarant, in writing, and the writing shall be signed by the declarant and two witnesses" (§19a-575a(b)). Revoking the representative does not of itself revoke the living will (§19a-575a(e)). Divorce, legal separation, annulment or dissolution revokes a spouse's appointment as representative unless the principal specifies otherwise (§19a-579b)
- Oral instructions
- Yes, and they must be recorded — §19a-578(b) requires a provider to record in the medical record "any oral communication concerning any aspect of the patient's health care" made by the patient directly; §19a-571(a) directs the attending practitioner to consult statements the patient made directly
- Uninitialled box
- The form's pregnancy election — "(Place a check to indicate option (1) or (2) or specify alternative instructions after (3))" (§19a-575, §19a-575a). Left unmarked, the declarant has chosen neither
- Provider may not require
- Yes — §19a-580b: "No physician, health care provider or health care insurer shall require a person to execute a living will or appoint a health care representative as a condition of treatment or receiving health care benefits."
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive. A DNR bracelet exists by regulation, for the DNR order (§19a-580d(b))
- Citation
- Conn. Gen. Stat. § 19a-570 et seq.
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What Connecticut actually recognizes
Two features of the chapter do the real work on this page.
The reliance rule is the strongest of its kind found in this set. §19a-575a: "Any party receiving a duly executed copy or facsimile of this document may rely upon it unless such party has received actual notice of my revocation of it."
And furnishing is one of the conditions on which the document starts. §19a-579: a living will or appointment of health care representative "becomes operative when (1) the document is furnished to the attending physician or advanced practice registered nurse, and (2) the declarant is determined by the attending physician or advanced practice registered nurse to be incapacitated."
That is a conjunction, not a sequence: furnished and determined. The chapter is titled after the removal of life support systems, and both of those sentences are about a document that has to be somewhere before it does anything.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for Connecticut
"A Connecticut living will does not apply if you are pregnant." That was the law until 2018. §19a-574, titled "Nonapplicability to pregnant patient," reads in the current chapter: "Section 19a-574 is repealed, effective May 24, 2018." The automatic carve-out is gone. What replaced it is a choice the declarant makes on the form: "(1) I intend to accept life support systems if my doctor believes that doing so would allow my fetus to reach a live birth. (2) I intend this document to apply without modifications." (§19a-575, §19a-575a)
A page or a form that still states the old carve-out is repeating a repealed section — and there is a second consequence. The old rule applied itself. The new one does not: a pre-2018 form has no election to make, and a current form left unmarked has not made it.
"You can revoke a Connecticut directive at any time, in any manner." True of the living will: "A living will may be revoked at any time and in any manner by the declarant, without regard to the declarant's mental or physical condition." (§19a-579a(a)) Not true of the appointment of health care representative, which "may only be revoked by the declarant, in writing, and the writing shall be signed by the declarant and two witnesses" (§19a-575a(b)).
One document, two instruments, two revocation rules — and revoking the representative does not revoke the living will (§19a-575a(e)). Someone who tore up the combined form believing it revoked both has done neither.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in Connecticut
WearableDocs is how your Connecticut advance directive gets found. There is no bracelet, necklace, card or medallion provision attached to the living will or to the appointment of health care representative anywhere in ch. 368w.
What Connecticut gives instead is the broadest reliance rule in this set, and it is worth reading word by word:
"Any party receiving a duly executed copy or facsimile of this document may rely upon it unless such party has received actual notice of my revocation of it." (§19a-575a)
Any party. A copy or a facsimile. Reliance is the default and revocation is the exception that has to be actually known. That is not copy-equivalence — the copy is not made the original — but it removes the question most states leave open, which is whether the person holding the photocopy is protected for acting on it.
And Connecticut is one of the states where the directive has to arrive. §19a-579 makes furnishing to the attending physician or advanced practice registered nurse the first of two conditions on which the instrument becomes operative. A Connecticut directive that is signed, correctly witnessed, in date and sitting in a drawer has not started. That is a stronger claim than findability, and it is the claim this page can make.
The carried device that does exist in Connecticut belongs to a different instrument. §19a-580d(b) requires the Department of Public Health to adopt regulations governing the recognition and transfer of do not resuscitate orders between health care institutions and on EMS intervention, and says those regulations "shall include, but not be limited to, procedures concerning the use of do not resuscitate bracelets." That is the DNR order — written by a physician or an advanced practice registered nurse for a particular patient (§19a-580d(a)) — and it is not the living will and not the appointment of a representative. A directive does not bind EMS on CPR.