Ohio Rev. Code ch. 2133 · ch. 1337 · Ohio
Ohio: how to sign your advance directive
Ohio has two instruments, in two chapters, and they share an execution rule. The declaration lives under chapter 2133, the "Modified Uniform Rights of the Terminally Ill Act." The durable power of attorney for health care lives under R.C. 1337.11 to 1337.17. Both are signed at the end, both must state the date of execution, and both take two witnesses or a notary — not both.
Why WearableDocs
In Ohio, 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 Ohio asks
What you need to sign in Ohio
- Instruments
- Declaration (ch. 2133) · durable power of attorney for health care (R.C. 1337.11–1337.17) — separate chapters, two instruments
- Form
- Illustrative — printed forms of both may be sold or otherwise distributed for use by adults who are not advised by an attorney (§2133.07(B); §1337.17)
- Execution
- Two witnesses OR a notary, in both. Each instrument must be signed at the end and state the date of its execution (§2133.02(A)(1), (B); §1337.12(A)(1), (B)–(C))
- May not witness
- Declaration — witnesses must be adults not related to the declarant by blood, marriage or adoption, not the attending physician, and not the administrator of any nursing home in which the declarant is receiving care (§2133.02(B)(1)). Power of attorney — the same relative bar, plus the attorney in fact and any alternate attorney in fact, the attending physician, and the nursing home administrator (§1337.12(B))
- May not be your agent
- The attending physician and any administrator of a nursing home in which the principal is receiving care may not be designated. Nor may an employee or agent of the attending physician or of a health care facility in which the principal is being treated — unless that person is a competent adult related by blood, marriage or adoption, or the principal and the person are members of the same religious order (§1337.12(A)(2))
- Delivery
- Yes for the declaration. It becomes operative when it is "communicated to the attending physician," the two physicians make the condition determination, and the attending physician determines the declarant can no longer make informed decisions (§2133.03(A)(1)). No delivery precondition found for the power of attorney
- Who decides
- Declaration — the attending physician and one other physician who examines the declarant; for a permanently unconscious state the consulting physician must be qualified by advanced education, training, certification or experience to make that determination (§2133.03(A)(1)–(2)). Power of attorney — the attending physician alone determines that the principal has lost the capacity to make informed health care decisions (§1337.13(A)(1))
- Registry
- None
- Age
- No departure from 18 recorded — "an adult who is of sound mind" (§2133.02(A)(1)); "adult" means eighteen or older (§1337.11(A))
- Reciprocity
- Yes for the declaration — one executed under another state's law in compliance with that law, or in substantial compliance with Ohio's, is valid for Ohio's purposes (§2133.14). Nothing found for the power of attorney
- Pregnancy
- Yes, for the agent's authority — an attorney in fact may not refuse or withdraw informed consent to health care for a pregnant principal if that would terminate the pregnancy, unless the pregnancy or the health care poses a substantial risk to the principal's life, or the attending physician and at least one other examining physician determine to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the fetus would not be born alive (§1337.13(D))
- Uninitialled box
- An uninitialled nutrition-and-hydration box authorises nothing. In both instruments the authority to withhold or withdraw nutrition or hydration from a permanently unconscious patient requires a statement in capital letters or other conspicuous type (or a marked box) and "placing the principal's initials or signature underneath or adjacent to the statement, check, or other mark" (§2133.02(A)(3)(a); §1337.13(E)(2))
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive — see below
- Citation
- Ohio Rev. Code ch. 2133 · ch. 1337
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What Ohio actually recognizes
Then Ohio settles a question most states leave to argument. If you have both documents, the declaration supersedes the durable power of attorney for health care to the extent their provisions would conflict if you are in a terminal condition or a permanently unconscious state (§2133.03(B)(2)). Your instructions outrank your agent.
And Ohio makes the nutrition-and-hydration box in each document do real work. Signing the form is not enough to authorise it; the authorisation has to be conspicuous and initialled.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for Ohio
"The agent has the final word when you have both documents." In Ohio the declaration supersedes the durable power of attorney for health care to the extent their provisions conflict while you are in a terminal condition or a permanently unconscious state. §2133.03(B)(2) says it directly, and §1337.12(D)(1) sends the reader back to it. The person you named is not the last word on those two conditions — the document you signed is.
"Signing the printed form is enough to give your agent the nutrition and hydration power." In both Ohio instruments it is not enough to sign. The authorisation requires a conspicuous statement or marked box and your initials or signature underneath or adjacent to it (§2133.02(A)(3)(a); §1337.13(E)(2)). A form signed at the bottom and not initialled at the box gives the agent no authority to withhold nutrition or hydration from a permanently unconscious principal.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in Ohio
WearableDocs is how your Ohio advance directive gets found. Ohio builds only one carried instrument — DNR identification, which belongs to the DNR order — and a carried advance directive gets no legal force. No bracelet, necklace or card provision attaches to the declaration or to the durable power of attorney for health care. Ohio's DNR identification is a separate instrument — §2133.25 directs the department to approve one or more standard forms of DNR identification to be used throughout the state — and it speaks for the DNR order, never for your directive or your agent.
But Ohio is a declaration-delivery state, and that matters more here than a bracelet statute would. The declaration is not operative until it is "communicated to the attending physician" and the two-physician determination is made (§2133.03(A)(1)). A declaration that is signed, dated, properly witnessed or notarised and sitting in a drawer has not started.
The card is how the document reaches the attending physician while there is still time for the record to be built around it.