Mont. Code Ann. §50-9-101 et seq. · Montana
Montana: how to sign your advance directive
Montana's instrument is a declaration under the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, and the designee rides inside it. §50-9-103(1): "An individual of sound mind and 18 years of age or older may execute at any time a declaration governing the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment. The declarant may designate another individual of sound mind and 18 years of age or older to make decisions..." The statute then publishes two forms — one plain, one with a designee — and says of each that it "may but need not be" used.
Why WearableDocs
Wherever you are, the directive has to be reachable
A signed advance directive that cannot be produced when someone asks for it fails in practice. WearableDocs stores yours and makes it open in seconds from a card you already carry.
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 Montana asks
What you need to sign in Montana
- Instruments
- One declaration governing the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment, which may designate another individual to decide (§50-9-103(1)). A designation under §§72-5-501 and 72-5-502 carrying written authority to make these decisions "constitutes ... a declaration designating another individual to act for the declarant" (§50-9-103(4))
- Form
- Illustrative — §50-9-103(2)–(3): the declaration, with or without a designee, "may but need not be in the following form"
- Execution
- Two witnesses. No notary option. Signed by the declarant or by another at the declarant's direction, and "witnessed by two individuals" (§50-9-103(1))
- May not witness
- None at all. §50-9-103(1) requires two witnesses and states no disqualification for either — no relationship bar, no estate bar, no provider bar
- May not be your agent
- None. The designee must be of sound mind and 18 years of age or older, and that is the only stated qualification (§50-9-103(1))
- Copy rule
- None found — no provision makes a copy the equivalent of the original. §50-9-103(5) is about what a provider does when furnished a copy, not about the copy standing in for the declaration
- Who decides
- Your attending physician or attending advanced practice registered nurse. In the form's words, the declaration operates on their opinion that the condition will cause death "within a relatively short time" (§50-9-103(2)–(3))
- Standard determined
- Both — the form ties the declaration to an incurable or irreversible condition and to your being "no longer able to make decisions regarding my medical treatment" (§50-9-103(2)–(3))
- Registry
- Yes — the health care declaration registry, established and maintained by the Attorney General (§50-9-501(1)). It is "accessible through a website maintained by the attorney general", held in a secure database, and "used to store declarations pertaining to life-sustaining treatment made pursuant to 50-9-103 that are filed with the attorney general" (§50-9-501(3)–(4)). The Office of Consumer Protection administers it and states that advance health care directives "cannot be filed electronically" — filing goes to the Office's address in Helena
- Age
- 18 — for the declarant and for the designee, who must also be of sound mind (§50-9-103(1))
- Uninitialled box
- The statutory forms contain no boxes to initial. The declaration is fixed text that you sign, in either of the two published versions (§50-9-103(2)–(3))
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive — see below
- Citation
- Mont. Code Ann. §50-9-101 et seq.
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What Montana actually recognizes
Montana is the loosest state in this set on who may sign, and it is worth being exact about how far that goes. §50-9-103(1) requires the declaration to be signed by the declarant or by another at the declarant's direction, "and must be witnessed by two individuals." That is the whole of the execution rule: two witnesses, no notary option, and no disqualification of any kind — no relationship bar, no estate bar, no provider bar. The same is true of the designee, whose only stated qualification is to be of sound mind and 18.
Montana also runs one of the few state registries in this set, under the Attorney General. It is a paper pipeline: the Department of Justice's Office of Consumer Protection, which administers it, tells consumers plainly that advance health care directives "cannot be filed electronically."
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for Montana
"Your witnesses can't be related to you, and can't be beneficiaries." In Montana they can be both. §50-9-103(1) requires two witnesses and names no disqualification for them — no blood or marriage bar, no estate interest bar, no provider bar. A Montanan who hunted for two unrelated witnesses, or who was told their declaration was defective because a daughter signed it, did unnecessary work and may have doubted a document that was good.
"Pick someone who isn't your doctor." Montana disqualifies no one from being your designee either. §50-9-103(1) requires only that the person be of sound mind and 18 or older. The statute's silence is unusual enough that it is stated here as a finding rather than left blank: there is no agent-eligibility rule in the section.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in Montana
WearableDocs is how your Montana advance directive gets found. There is no bracelet, necklace or medallion provision, and no copy-equivalence rule — a copy is not the original here, and the only thing the statute does with a furnished copy is require a provider to file it (§50-9-103(5)). A DNR order is a separate instrument; a directive does not bind EMS on CPR.
Montana's registry is real and statewide, and it is also paper. The Office of Consumer Protection's page for the End-of-Life Registry states that advance health care directives "cannot be filed electronically", and gives a postal address in Helena. The most official place a Montana directive can sit is therefore one that requires an envelope, and it is a place a paramedic in the field is not looking.
So Montana is a findability state with an unusually clear statement of the problem. §50-9-103(5) begins at the moment a provider "is furnished a copy of the declaration" — which means someone has to furnish it. Nobody is obliged to go looking, and the registry will not be read at the roadside. The card is how the declaration arrives while the record is still being built.