SDCL ch. 34-12D · §59-7-2.1 · South Dakota
South Dakota: how to sign your advance directive
South Dakota keeps the two instruments in two places and two titles. The living will declaration sits in SDCL ch. 34-12D, under Health. The durable power of attorney for health care sits in §59-7-2.1, under Property — a single section that borrows its substance from §59-12-3, which is not in this research at all.
Why WearableDocs
In South Dakota, 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 South Dakota asks
What you need to sign in South Dakota
- Instruments
- Two, in different titles — a living will declaration (SDCL ch. 34-12D) and a durable power of attorney for health care (§59-7-2.1). The later-executed document controls where they conflict (§34-12D-4)
- Form
- Illustrative — §34-12D-3: "A declaration may, but need not, be in the following form."
- Execution
- Two adult witnesses OR a notary — the declaration at §34-12D-2, the health care power of attorney at §59-7-2.1 ("witnessed by two other adult individuals or by a notary public"). Both routes, not both requirements
- May not witness
- None at all. §34-12D-2 requires two adults and states no disqualification. This is a finding, not a blank
- May not be your agent
- BLANK. §59-7-2.1 cross-references §59-12-3 for the agent rules, and §59-12-3 is not in the corpus. Absence cannot be asserted
- Copy rule
- None of any kind. No copy-equivalence, reliance or facsimile rule appears anywhere in ch. 34-12D or in §59-7-2.1
- Delivery
- No delivery precondition. Once the attending physician determines a terminal condition, §34-12D-7 requires the physician who knows of the declaration to record the determination and the declaration's terms in the medical record
- Who decides
- One — the attending physician (§34-12D-5)
- Standard determined
- Condition, not capacity. Terminal condition, death imminent, and the declarant no longer able to communicate decisions about medical care
- Registry
- None
- Age
- A competent adult; no departure from 18 recorded
- Reciprocity
- Yes — §34-12D-22: a declaration meeting the execution requirements of the declarant's then-jurisdiction, of the jurisdiction where executed, or of this chapter is valid
- Pregnancy
- Yes, and it is detailed — §34-12D-10: life-sustaining treatment and artificial nutrition and hydration shall be provided to a pregnant woman unless the attending physician and one other physician who has examined her certify on the chart, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, that the procedures will not maintain her so as to permit the continuing development and live birth of the unborn child, or will be physically harmful to her, or will prolong severe pain that cannot be alleviated
- Revocation
- **§34-12D-8: *"at any time and in any manner without regard to the declarant's mental or physical condition."*** Effective upon communication to the health care provider, who must enter it in the medical record. No divorce provision found
- Oral instructions
- The declaration must be signed, but it may be revoked "in any manner" (§34-12D-8) — which does not require a writing
- Uninitialled box
- Silence is not a decision. §34-12D-2: the declaration "must state the declarant's preferences regarding the provision, withholding, or withdrawal of artificial nutrition and hydration", and if it does not, ANH "is governed by the laws of this state that apply in the absence of a declaration"
- Provider may not require
- §34-12D-16 — no one may prohibit or require the execution of a declaration as a condition of being insured for, or receiving, health care services
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive — and see below
- Citation
- SDCL ch. 34-12D · §59-7-2.1
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What South Dakota actually recognizes
They are not interchangeable, and the statute says which wins: §34-12D-4, the later-executed document controls to the extent the two conflict.
The declaration is narrow by design. §34-12D-5 makes it operative only when "the declarant is determined by the attending physician to be in a terminal condition, death is imminent, and the declarant is no longer able to communicate decisions about medical care." That is a condition test, not a capacity test, and it is narrower than almost every other state in this set.
What the chapter does not contain is as notable as what it does. There is no copy rule, no device provision, no EMS provision, and — for the declaration — no witness disqualification of any kind.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for South Dakota
"Sign advance directives in the presence of a notary public and two witnesses." That sentence is not invented — it is SDSU Extension's own advice to South Dakotans. The statute says otherwise. §34-12D-2 requires a declaration "witnessed by two adults, or by a notary public who shall thereafter notarize the declaration", and §59-7-2.1 uses the same either/or for the health care power of attorney. The state's sample form invites the confusion by carrying both witness lines and a notary block on the same page. A South Dakotan who could not find two witnesses, and so did nothing, has been stopped by a requirement that does not exist — and a South Dakotan who found two witnesses and no notary has a valid document.
"Your living will covers tube feeding." In South Dakota it depends on the document saying so. §34-12D-2 requires the declaration to state the declarant's preferences on artificial nutrition and hydration, and if it does not, the question is "governed by the laws of this state that apply in the absence of a declaration." Silence is not a refusal here. A declaration that never mentions ANH does not settle it.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in South Dakota
WearableDocs is how your South Dakota advance directive gets found. There is no device provision in ch. 34-12D, no device provision in §59-7-2.1, and nothing that makes a copy stand in for an original. Among the states read in this research, South Dakota is one of the very few with none of the three.
The state does have a wearable rule, and it is important to name the instrument it belongs to. Comfort One is a bracelet, and South Dakota's own Extension service describes it in terms that settle the question: "a bracelet worn to alert emergency personal to not perform resuscitative measures." It is issued against a DNR order. It is not the declaration and it is not the health care power of attorney, and no part of ch. 34-12D reaches it.
South Dakota is also the state whose own Extension service states the findability doctrine plainly, which is worth quoting exactly, with the attribution attached — it is a land-grant university extension, not the legislature:
"Place a copy of advance directives on your refrigerator clearly labeled 'Advance Directives' because emergency service personnel may check there, during an emergency." "Keep a card in your purse or wallet with the name and contact information of your healthcare agent."
That is the honest version of the claim, and the same page states its limit in the same breath: "emergency medical professionals MUST perform CPR, unless you have Comfort One or South Dakota Medical Order for Scope of Treatment that says you do not want CPR." Refrigerator, wallet, bracelet — three different places, and only the bracelet is a legal instrument.