N.Y. Pub. Health Law §2980 et seq. · New York
New York: how to sign your advance directive
New York has no statutory living will. Not a restrictive one, not an old-fashioned one — none. The health care proxy statute, PHL §2980 et seq., appoints an agent and says nothing about a separate instruction instrument.
Why WearableDocs
In New York, 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 New York asks
What you need to sign in New York
- Instruments
- Health care proxy only. No statutory living will. Instructions may be written into the proxy itself (§2981(5)(b))
- Form
- Illustrative — "may, but need not". And it must not be a form that also carries a power of attorney
- Execution
- Two witnesses. The agent may not witness. Remote witnessing is authorised (§2981(2-a))
- May not witness
- Your agent
- May not be your agent
- A facility operator, administrator or employee if you are a patient there; one person may not serve as agent for more than 10 principals; a physician, PA or NP serving as agent must stop being your attending practitioner
- Copy rule
- None found
- Delivery
- No — the directive does not wait on delivery to a clinician to operate.
- Registry
- None
- Age
- 18
- Patient objection
- §2983(5) — the principal's own objection prevails unless a court orders otherwise. §2983(6) puts a standing duty on the agent to confirm
- Carried device
- Nothing for the proxy
- Citation
- N.Y. Pub. Health Law §2980 et seq.
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What New York actually recognizes
The state's own Department of Health describes living wills, and New York courts have given them effect. But there is no statute, which means there is no execution rule, no witness requirement, and no form — and also no statutory protection when one is disputed.
So New York reduces to one document. And the statute hands you the fix directly: §2981(5)(b) says the proxy "may include the principal's wishes or instructions."
Your instructions ride inside the proxy. One document, one signature, and no second instrument that a hospital has to reconcile against the first.
The trap is second: a New York health care proxy cannot be executed on a form that also carries a power of attorney. Combined-form templates sold nationally are invalid here, and the failure is silent — the form looks complete.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for New York
"New York has living wills." It has living wills the way it has a great many things: in practice, described by the state's own health department, and with no statute behind them. Effect comes from case law, not from a validity statute. That is a materially weaker position than a New Yorker signing a statutory form in Connecticut would be in, and the guides do not draw the distinction.
"Use a combined living will and health care proxy form." In New York the proxy cannot be executed on a form that also carries a power of attorney. National templates that pair them produce an invalid proxy, and nothing about the document will tell you.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in New York
WearableDocs is how your New York advance directive gets found. The proxy statute has no device provision.
New York's distinctive feature is not about carrying at all — it is §2983(5): the principal's own objection prevails unless a court orders otherwise. The document yields to the person. A proxy that contradicts what you are saying in the room does not override you.
That is worth knowing for its own sake, and it has a quiet relevance to anything carried on your body: the state's rule puts your present voice above your recorded one, which is the opposite of the problem a carried document solves. The card matters here for a narrower reason than in Pennsylvania — not to make the proxy operate, but so the person treating you knows an agent exists and who to call.