Miss. Code Ann. §41-41-201 through §41-41-229 · Mississippi
Mississippi: how to sign your advance directive
Mississippi runs the Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act, §§41-41-201 through 41-41-229, and its name for the instrument is an advance health-care directive — defined at §41-41-203(b) as "an individual instruction or a power of attorney for health care." The form published at §41-41-209 does both, and tells you so: "This form lets you do either or both of these things."
Why WearableDocs
In Mississippi, 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 Mississippi asks
What you need to sign in Mississippi
- Instruments
- One advance health-care directive — an individual instruction, a power of attorney for health care, or both (§41-41-203(b); form at §41-41-209)
- Form
- Illustrative — §41-41-209: "The following form may be used"; "You are free to use a different form"
- Execution
- Two witnesses OR a notary. Two witnesses, each signing a prescribed declaration under penalty of perjury, or acknowledgment before a notary public in this state (§41-41-205(2)(a)–(b))
- May not witness
- A health-care provider; an employee of a health-care provider or facility; the agent (§41-41-205(3)). In addition, at least one of the witnesses must be neither a relative by blood, marriage or adoption nor a person entitled to any portion of your estate under a will or codicil existing at the time, or by operation of law (§41-41-205(4))
- May not be your agent
- Unless related to you by blood, marriage or adoption, your agent may not be an owner, operator or employee of a residential long-term health-care institution at which you are receiving care (§41-41-205(2))
- Copy rule
- A copy has the same effect as the original — §41-41-225, and again in the form at §41-41-209, paragraph (11)
- Delivery
- No precondition — and a duty on the provider. A supervising health-care provider who knows of a directive "shall promptly record its existence in the patient's health care record and, if it is in writing, shall request a copy and if one is furnished shall arrange for its maintenance in the health-care record" (§41-41-215(2))
- Who decides
- Your primary physician — "Unless otherwise specified in a written advance health-care directive" (§41-41-205(6)). The determination must be recorded in the patient's health-care record and communicated (§41-41-215(3))
- Trigger overridable
- Yes. §41-41-205(5) begins "Unless otherwise specified in a power of attorney for health care"; §41-41-205(6) begins "Unless otherwise specified in a written advance health-care directive"
- Registry
- None
- Age
- 18 — "adult" means 18 or older (§41-41-203(a)). An emancipated minor may also give an instruction or execute a power of attorney (§41-41-205(1)–(2))
- Reciprocity
- Yes — a directive is valid if it complies with this Act "regardless of when or where executed or communicated" (§41-41-205(10))
- Revocation
- The designation of an agent may be revoked only by a signed writing or by personally informing the supervising health-care provider (§41-41-207(1)). Everything else may be revoked "at any time and in any manner that communicates an intent to revoke" (§41-41-207(2)). A decree of annulment, divorce, dissolution of marriage or legal separation revokes a previous designation of a spouse as agent, unless the decree or the power of attorney says otherwise (§41-41-207(4))
- Oral instructions
- Yes. An individual instruction "may be oral or written", and may be "limited to take effect only if a specified condition arises" (§41-41-205(1))
- Uninitialled box
- The artificial nutrition and hydration box is an override, not a choice. Unless you mark it, artificial nutrition and hydration follows the end-of-life choice you made above; if you mark it, "artificial nutrition and hydration must be provided regardless of my condition and regardless of the choice I have made" (§41-41-209, Part 2(7))
- Provider may not require
- §41-41-215(8) — a health-care provider or institution "may not require or prohibit the execution or revocation of an advance health-care directive as a condition for providing health care"
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive — see below
- Citation
- Miss. Code Ann. §41-41-201 through §41-41-229 — secondary host
Read from the enacted statute, NONE — sec.
The instrument
What Mississippi actually recognizes
The two halves have different execution rules, and the difference is the point. An individual instruction "may be oral or written" and "may be limited to take effect only if a specified condition arises" (§41-41-205(1)). A power of attorney for health care must be in writing, dated, signed, and witnessed by one of exactly two routes (§41-41-205(2)): two witnesses who each sign a prescribed declaration under penalty of perjury, or acknowledgment before a notary public "at any place within this state."
And where most states make you work for it, Mississippi is generous: a copy of a directive "has the same effect as the original" (§41-41-225).
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for Mississippi
"You can get it notarised anywhere." In Mississippi the notary route is in-state only. §41-41-205(2)(b) requires the power of attorney to "be acknowledged before a notary public at any place within this state", and the form repeats it — "acknowledged before a notary public in the state" (§41-41-209, paragraph (13)). A Mississippian who signs in Memphis and has it notarised there has not used this route. Use the two-witness route instead, or notarise after you are back in Mississippi.
"Both witnesses have to be unrelated to you." They do not. §41-41-205(4) requires that "at least one (1) of the individuals used as a witness" be neither a relative by blood, marriage or adoption nor an estate beneficiary. The other witness may be a relative. Note that the same is not true of the profession bars — a health-care provider, a provider's employee and your agent are disqualified from witnessing at all, both of them (§41-41-205(3)).
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in Mississippi
WearableDocs is how your Mississippi advance directive gets found. There is no device provision and no bracelet statute in §§41-41-201 through 41-41-229. A DNR order is a separate instrument, and it is the DNR — not your directive — that a device would speak for. A directive does not bind EMS on CPR.
What Mississippi does give you is the strongest form of the copy rule: "A copy of a written advance health-care directive, revocation of an advance health-care directive, or designation or disqualification of a surrogate has the same effect as the original" (§41-41-225). You are not protecting an original by keeping it in a drawer. The signed copy is the document.
And the statute asks the provider to go and get it — a supervising health-care provider who knows of a directive "shall ... request a copy" and, when one is furnished, arrange for it to be kept in the health-care record (§41-41-215(2)).
Read the trigger on that duty carefully, because it is the whole case: "who knows of the existence of an advance health-care directive." The provider must act once they know. Nothing obliges them to find out. Mississippi is a findability state with a copy rule good enough that a copy in the right hands is worth exactly what the original is.