S.C. Code § 62-5-500 et seq. · South Carolina
South Carolina: how to sign your advance directive
South Carolina has a health care power of attorney whose form is not a suggestion. §62-5-503(a)(1) says the document must be substantially in the form set forth in Section 62-5-504 — the state's own form, reproduced in the statute, with numbered sections the principal initials. This is one of the few states in the set where the form is mandatory, and it changes what a valid document looks like.
Why WearableDocs
In South Carolina, the provider has to know the directive exists
Duty turns on knowledge, not on paper changing hands. WearableDocs is how they know: scan the card, open the page, read the document you signed — in the seconds someone is already asking for it.
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 South Carolina asks
What you need to sign in South Carolina
- Instruments
- A health care power of attorney (§62-5-500 et seq.) and, separately, a Declaration of a Desire for a Natural Death under the South Carolina Death with Dignity Act. The declaration outranks the agent
- Form
- Mandatory. §62-5-503(a)(1): the power of attorney "must be substantially in the form set forth in Section 62-5-504." The declaration's own Act is not in the captured corpus
- Execution
- Two witnesses, each signing an eight-item declaration (§62-5-503(a)(3)). The notary block on the form is expressly optional — "This portion of the document is optional and is not required to create a valid health care power of attorney." A notary is required on the alternative-compliance route
- May not witness
- Your spouse, children, grandchildren and other lineal descendants; your parents, grandparents and other lineal ancestors; your siblings and their lineal descendants; the spouse of any of them. Also: whoever is directly financially responsible for your medical care; a person named in your will, or who would inherit by intestacy; a life-insurance beneficiary; your agent or successor agent; your physician or the physician's employee; anyone with a claim against your estate. No more than one witness may be an employee of the facility where you are a patient
- May not be your agent
- A health care provider, or an employee of one, with whom you have a provider-patient relationship at execution; an employee of a nursing care facility where you reside; the spouse of any of them — unless the person is your relative
- Copy rule
- None found — no copy-equivalence, reliance or facsimile rule appears in the captured part
- Delivery
- Not physical delivery — but the provider must know. §62-5-508 triggers the provider's duty on "having knowledge" of the power of attorney rather than on receiving a copy, so no paper need change hands and a provider who has merely been told has a duty. The form advises that in a health care or nursing care facility "a copy of this document should be included in your medical record"
- Second physician
- The agent's own certification can substitute for a second physician
- Registry
- None
- Age
- 18 — §62-5-501(9): "A principal must be eighteen years of age or older and of sound mind." The agent must also be 18 and of sound mind
- Reciprocity
- Yes on both instruments. Form ¶9B: "This power of attorney is intended to be valid in any jurisdiction in which it is presented." The declaration definition reaches a "similar document executed in accordance with the law of another state"
- Pregnancy
- Yes — §62-5-507: if the principal has been diagnosed as pregnant, life-sustaining procedures "may not be withheld or withdrawn" under the power of attorney during the pregnancy
- Revocation
- §62-5-512(a)(1): a writing, an oral statement, or any other act notifying the agent or a provider of the specific intent to revoke. A subsequent inconsistent durable power of attorney also revokes. A spouse-agent's authority passes to the successor if the agent "becomes divorced or separated" — "separated" is defined at §62-5-501(10)
- Oral instructions
- An oral statement revokes (§62-5-512(a)(1)). No oral execution route found in the captured part
- Uninitialled box
- It takes authority away from the agent. §62-5-503(b) and form ¶8: initial none of the tube-feeding statements and the agent "will not have authority to direct that nutrition and hydration necessary for comfort care or alleviation of pain be withdrawn"
- Provider may not require
- §62-5-513(b) — no one may be required to sign a health care power of attorney as a condition of insurance coverage, of receiving medical treatment, or of admission to a facility
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive
- Citation
- S.C. Code § 62-5-500 et seq.
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What South Carolina actually recognizes
Alongside it sits a separate instrument, the Declaration of a Desire for a Natural Death, defined at §62-5-501(2) as "a document executed in accordance with the South Carolina Death with Dignity Act." The Act is named in the code and its own sections are not in this research. Everything said about the declaration here is said from the definition and from what the power of attorney statute says about it.
What the power of attorney statute says about it is decisive. The statutory form's paragraph 6 reads: if there is a valid Declaration, "the instructions contained in the Declaration will be given effect in any situation to which they are applicable. My agent will have authority to make decisions concerning my health care only in situations to which the Declaration does not apply." On the face of South Carolina's own form, the declaration outranks the agent.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for South Carolina
"Any health care power of attorney form will do." In South Carolina it will not. §62-5-503(a)(1) makes the §62-5-504 form mandatory — the statute says the document "must be substantially in the form set forth in Section 62-5-504". And the form is not just a layout. Each witness must sign an eight-item declaration covering their relationship to you, their financial interest, your will and intestacy, life insurance, their appointment as agent, their status as your physician or your physician's employee, and any claim against your estate. A generic form witnessed by two people who signed a bare signature line has not met that requirement.
"Your agent decides." South Carolina's own form says otherwise. Paragraph 6: if you have a valid Declaration of a Desire for a Natural Death, its instructions "will be given effect in any situation to which they are applicable", and the agent's authority runs "only in situations to which the Declaration does not apply." Someone who signed a declaration in 2005 and a health care power of attorney naming a spouse in 2019 may believe the later document controls. The form says the earlier one does.
"You need a notary." The notary block on the statutory form carries its own disclaimer: "This portion of the document is optional and is not required to create a valid health care power of attorney." Two witnessing declarations are what the statute requires.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in South Carolina
WearableDocs is how your South Carolina advance directive gets found. South Carolina's ranking rule means two documents have to reach the bedside rather than one, and a carried advance directive gets no legal force. No device provision, no bracelet statute, and no copy-equivalence rule appears in the captured part of §62-5-500 et seq.
That matters more here than in most states, for a reason that is specific to South Carolina: the document is mandatory and its witness declaration is long. This is not a state where a person can improvise a page and have it honoured. The document that will be read at the bedside is the §62-5-504 form, with two completed witnessing declarations on it, and it either reaches the provider or it does not.
South Carolina also has the ranking rule working against findability. The declaration outranks the agent, so the instructions a clinician needs are in the older instrument — the one less likely to be in the folder — while the newer document names the person to call. Getting both in one place is the whole problem, and the card is the only part of it that travels.