N.J.S.A. §26:2H-53 et seq. · New Jersey
New Jersey: how to sign your advance directive
New Jersey's advance directive has two halves, and you may use either or both. The proxy directive designates a health care representative. The instruction directive states your treatment wishes. §26:2H-58(b): an instruction directive "may, but need not, be executed contemporaneously with, or be attached to, a proxy directive."
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 New Jersey asks
What you need to sign in New Jersey
- Instruments
- Proxy directive + instruction directive — either, both, or one attached to the other (§26:2H-58(b))
- Execution
- Two subscribing adult witnesses, OR acknowledgment before a notary public, an attorney at law, or another person authorized to administer oaths. The declarant signs and dates, or has it signed at the declarant's direction (§26:2H-56)
- May not witness
- The designated health care representative may not act as a witness to the execution (§26:2H-56)
- May not be your agent
- An operator, administrator or employee of a health care institution in which the declarant is a patient or resident — unless related to the declarant by blood, marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or adoption. The restriction does not apply to a physician who is not the attending physician and the representative at the same time (§26:2H-58(a)(2))
- Who decides
- An attending physician determines in writing that the patient lacks capacity to make a particular health care decision, and the determination shall be confirmed by one or more physicians — unless the lack of capacity is clearly apparent and the attending physician and the representative agree confirmation is unnecessary. A physician designated as the representative may not make or confirm the determination (§26:2H-60)
- Registry
- None
- Age
- No departure from 18 recorded — the representative must be "an adult with mental capacity" (§26:2H-58(a))
- Pregnancy
- No automatic carve-out. A female declarant may state in the directive what effect it shall have if she is pregnant (§26:2H-56), and shall state the limitations on the representative's authority that apply if she is pregnant (§26:2H-58(a)(5))
- Revocation
- Notification, orally or in writing, to the health care representative, physician, nurse, other health care professional or other reliable witness, or any other act evidencing an intent to revoke; or execution of a later directive (§26:2H-57(b)). Divorce or legal separation revokes a spouse-representative, and termination of a domestic partnership or civil union revokes that designee, unless the directive says otherwise (§26:2H-57(c))
- Oral instructions
- The directive itself is written. Revocation may be oral (§26:2H-57(b)(1)), and a patient who lacks mental capacity may suspend the directive by the same means, including oral notification (§26:2H-57(d))
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive — see below
- Citation
- N.J.S.A. §26:2H-53 et seq. — secondary host
Read from the enacted statute, NONE — sec.
The instrument
What New Jersey actually recognizes
Two features of this act are worth stating plainly, because most summaries do not.
A patient who lacks mental capacity may suspend the directive. §26:2H-57(d) says so in terms, and allows it by any of the same means a capable declarant could use — including oral notification. Reinstatement is also oral or written.
The alternative to witnesses is wider than in most states. You may execute before two subscribing adult witnesses, or instead acknowledge before a notary public, an attorney at law, or any other person authorized to administer oaths (§26:2H-56).
One gap is carried openly on this page: whether New Jersey's statutory form is mandatory is not established in this research. The phase-3 table records that cell as BLANK, and the surviving captures do not settle it.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for New Jersey
"The patient has to have capacity to revoke an advance directive." Not in New Jersey. §26:2H-57(d): a patient who lacks mental capacity may suspend an advance directive — the proxy directive, the instruction directive, or both — by any of the means available to a capable declarant, including oral notification to the representative, a physician, a nurse or another health care professional. The suspension is effective upon communication (§26:2H-57(e)), and the patient may reinstate the directive by oral or written notification.
That is not a detail. It means the operative state of a New Jersey directive can change, out loud, at exactly the moment the document is being relied on — and it is the opposite of the rule most summaries describe.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in New Jersey
WearableDocs is how your New Jersey advance directive gets found. No device provision and no copy-equivalence rule appear in the captured sections.
What New Jersey has instead is a directive that can be switched off and on by the patient, including a patient who lacks capacity, with the change taking effect the moment it is communicated (§26:2H-57(d)–(e)). In a state with that rule, the question is never whether the original exists. It is whether the people acting on it are holding the current version.
The card answers that question in the only way available: it puts the operative document where the decision is being made, instead of in a drawer at home.