Tenn. Code Ann. § 34-6-201 et seq. · Tennessee
Tennessee: how to sign your advance directive
Tennessee's instrument is a durable power of attorney for health care, and it is the whole instrument. There is no separate statutory living will in the captured text: the instructions ride inside the appointment, or they are not part of the document at all.
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 Tennessee asks
What you need to sign in Tennessee
- Instruments
- A durable power of attorney for health care (§34-6-201 et seq.). No separate statutory instruction instrument appears in the captured text
- Execution
- A notary with no witnesses, OR two witnesses with no notary (§34-6-203(a)(3)). Both routes are valid; they do not combine. An attestation clause is required — the document "shall contain an attestation clause that attests to the witnesses' compliance"
- May not witness
- A witness must be a competent adult who is not the agent, and at least one of the two must not be related to you by blood, marriage or adoption and must not be entitled to any part of your estate under an existing will or codicil or by operation of law
- May not be your agent
- Your treating health care provider or their employee; an operator of a treating health care institution or their employee — unless the employee is your relative by blood, marriage or adoption. A conservator needs a legal certificate before serving
- Copy rule
- None found — no copy-equivalence or facsimile rule appears in the captured sections
- Who decides
- No incapacity trigger appears in the captured text. The determination event is not in these sections. §§34-6-202, -207, -209 to -213 are not captured, so absence cannot be asserted further
- Registry
- None
- Revocation
- A conservator, guardian of the estate or other fiduciary cannot revoke or amend the power of attorney, and cannot replace the attorney in fact (§34-6-204(a)(2)(A)). Only a court can, on application and good cause shown (§34-6-204(a)(2)(B)). No divorce provision found in the captured text
- Oral instructions
- No oral execution route found. The principal may cut off the agent's hospital visitation right by notifying the provider orally or in writing (§34-6-206(b)(4)(B))
- Agent's visitation right
- §34-6-206(b). The agent has a right to in-person visitation at a hospital — at least one visit each day, at least one hour long — and that right "must not be terminated, suspended, waived, or otherwise limited" by a declared disaster or emergency
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive
- Citation
- Tenn. Code Ann. § 34-6-201 et seq. — secondary host
Read from the enacted statute, NONE — sec.
The instrument
What Tennessee actually recognizes
The chapter is titled Guardianship, and that is not an accident of filing. Part 2 sits inside a title whose business is who speaks for an adult who cannot speak for themselves, and Tennessee's answer is emphatic. §34-6-204(a)(1) gives the attorney in fact who is known to the provider to be available and willing "priority over any other person to act for the principal in all matters of health care decisions."
And the chapter does not, in the text that was captured, contain an incapacity trigger at all. Every other state in this set says when the document starts operating — a determination, a certification, a finding. Tennessee's captured sections describe who acts, and against whom, without saying what event turns the agent on.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for Tennessee
"Get it notarised and witnessed." Tennessee is either/or, and only one of the two. §34-6-203(a)(3): the signature "is valid if the principal's signature is either attested by a notary public with no witnesses or witnessed by two (2) witnesses without attestation by a notary public." A Tennessean who brought two witnesses and a notary did not harm the document — but a Tennessean who brought two witnesses and was told the notary was also needed has been given a step the statute does not ask for.
"The attestation clause is boilerplate." It is a requirement, not a courtesy. §34-6-203(a)(3) says the document "shall contain an attestation clause that attests to the witnesses' compliance with the requirements of this subdivision." The same subdivision is declared to have retroactive application — so the clause is being read into documents already signed, not only future ones.
"If you end up with a guardian, the guardian takes over the health care decisions." In Tennessee a conservator, guardian of the estate or other fiduciary cannot revoke or amend the power of attorney and cannot replace the attorney in fact (§34-6-204(a)(2)(A)). Only a court can do either, and only on application and good cause shown. The agent keeps the authority the principal gave them.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in Tennessee
WearableDocs is how your Tennessee advance directive gets found. No device provision, no bracelet or necklace rule, and no copy-equivalence rule appears in the sections that were read.
Tennessee is worth reading carefully here for a different reason. §34-6-204(a)(1) gives the available and willing attorney in fact priority over any other person to act in all matters of health care decisions — and the captured text does not say what event triggers that authority. In most states the question "is the document operating yet?" has a statutory answer, and the card's job is to be present when that answer is worked out. In Tennessee the question itself is open on the captured text, which makes getting the document into the record early more valuable, not less. The person who needs to know the agent's name is the provider standing in front of the patient, and the card is how that name arrives without a phone call.
Nothing more than that should be claimed for it here. Tennessee has not said a carried directive does anything, and this page does not say so either.