18 V.S.A. ch. 231 · Vermont
Vermont: how to sign your advance directive
Vermont puts nearly everything in one instrument. §9701(1) defines an advance directive as a written record that "may include appointment of an agent, identification of a preferred primary care clinician, instructions on health care desires or treatment goals, an anatomical gift, disposition of remains, and funeral goods and services." The agent and the instructions are one document, and so is the funeral plan.
Why WearableDocs
In Vermont, 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 Vermont asks
What you need to sign in Vermont
- Instruments
- One advance directive, which may carry an agent, health care instructions, an anatomical gift, disposition of remains and funeral goods and services
- Form
- Illustrative — the rules must provide "at least one optional form", and §9717 forbids any third party from requiring a different one
- Execution
- Two or more witnesses, 18 or over. No notary option anywhere. Each witness signs and affirms that the principal appeared to understand the nature of the document and to be free from duress or undue influence. Remote witnessing is permanent since 1 April 2024 — live interactive audio-video or by telephone, where the principal and the remote witness were known to each other, with the witness's name, contact information and relationship recorded on the directive
- May not witness
- The agent you appointed, and your spouse, parent, adult sibling, adult child or adult grandchild. A treating health care provider may witness (§9703(b)(3))
- May not be your agent
- Your own health care provider. Unless related by blood, marriage, civil union or adoption: an owner, operator, employee, agent or contractor of a residential care facility, health care facility or correctional facility where you reside at execution. Separately, funeral directors, crematory operators, cemetery officials and procurement staff cannot exercise the disposition, gift or funeral authority
- Copy rule
- A copy is the equal of the original. §9717: "A photocopy or facsimile of a duly executed original advance directive shall be relied upon to the same extent as the original."
- Delivery
- A duty to deliver. §9705: anyone possessing a duly executed advance directive who learns its terms may be applicable "shall deliver" it to the principal's clinician, provider or facility. §9702(a)(2) also requires the directive to affirm that the agent and alternates have been notified of, and accepted, the appointment
- Who decides
- One clinician — §9706(a)(1), who determines that the principal lacks capacity, makes specific findings as to cause, nature and projected duration, and makes reasonable efforts to notify the principal and the agent
- Trigger overridable
- Yes, and further than most. §9702(a)(3) lets the principal "specify a circumstance or condition, which may be unrelated to the principal's capacity, which, when met, makes the authority of an agent effective or ineffective". §9702(a)(4) allows the directive to take effect on execution
- Registry
- Yes — statutory. §9719 requires the Department of Health to maintain a registry, and §9719(b)(2)(B) provides for a sticker for a driver's licence recording that a directive exists
- Age
- An adult with capacity. No departure from 18 recorded
- Reciprocity
- Yes — §9716: the chapter does not limit the enforceability of a directive executed in another jurisdiction under that jurisdiction's law
- Pregnancy
- No automatic carve-out found in ch. 231. What exists instead is a slot: §9702(a)(8) lets the principal direct, in the directive itself, what life-sustaining treatment they would or would not want if pregnant
- Revocation
- Filing an action for annulment, divorce, dissolution of a civil union, legal separation or relief from abuse suspends a spouse-agent's designation from the moment of filing; it becomes permanent when the decree is final or the relief order is granted (§9704(d))
- Oral instructions
- The advance directive itself is a written record (§9701(1)). A principal with or without capacity may suspend or revoke a provision orally, in writing, or by any other act showing specific intent (§9704(2)) — except a designation of agent
- Provider may not require
- §9717 — "No third party shall require an additional or different form of advance directive."
- Explainer rule
- §9703(d)–(e) — executed in a nursing home, residential care facility or hospital without an independent explainer's signed affirmation, the directive is "not effective"
- Carried device
- Yes — for the DNR order. A DNR necklace, bracelet or anklet must be honoured (§9708(i); defined §9701(9)). Nothing for the directive beyond the copy rule
- Citation
- 18 V.S.A. ch. 231
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What Vermont actually recognizes
Cite ch. 231, not ch. 111. The older regime, 18 V.S.A. ch. 111 subchs. 1–2, was repealed by 2005 No. 55 §9. Forms and guides still in circulation cite the repealed chapter.
Vermont then attaches a condition that appears nowhere else in this set, and it catches exactly the people most likely to be signing a directive. If you execute it while being admitted to, or while resident in, a nursing home, residential care facility or hospital, §9703(d)–(e) says the directive "shall not be effective" unless an independent explainer — an ombudsman, clergy, a Vermont attorney, a probate designee, a hospital designee, a mental health patient representative, a trained volunteer, or a clinician not employed by the facility — explains it to you and signs a statement affirming that the explanation was given. It is the one execution rule in the set that can silently void a document that looks perfectly executed.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for Vermont
"Sign it in front of a notary." Vermont has no notary option anywhere. Two or more witnesses is the only route §9703(b) provides, and the witnesses do more than watch — each must sign and affirm that the principal appeared to understand the document and to be free from duress or undue influence. A Vermonter who notarised a directive and stopped there did not execute one.
"You can sign it in the nursing home." You can, and the directive will not be effective unless an independent explainer — an ombudsman, clergy, a Vermont attorney, a probate or hospital designee, a mental health patient representative, a trained volunteer, or a clinician not employed by the facility — explained the nature and effect of the directive and signed a statement affirming they did. The explainer may also serve as one of the witnesses. Vermont's own stated intent is "to ensure that residents of nursing homes and residential care facilities are willingly and voluntarily executing advance directives." The rule is easy to miss and the consequence is total.
"Cite 18 V.S.A. ch. 111." Chapter 111 subchapters 1–2 were repealed by 2005 No. 55 §9. The live chapter is 231.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in Vermont
Vermont is one of the states where the DNR identification device is real and the directive device is not — and it is also one of the states where the copy rule gets the directive almost all the way there.
The device statute is §9708(i): "Every health care provider, health care facility, and residential care facility shall honor a DNR/COLST order or a DNR identification unless" the provider believes in good faith that the patient wants the order revoked or that the person wearing the identification is not the person the order was issued for, and documents that belief in the record. A DNR identification is defined at §9701(9) as "a necklace, bracelet, or anklet." That force belongs to the DNR order. Nothing in ch. 231 extends it to the advance directive.
What the directive gets instead is §9717, and it is nearly as useful: a photocopy or facsimile "shall be relied upon to the same extent as the original." Vermont does not merely permit you to carry a copy — it obliges the provider to treat that copy as the document. Combined with §9705, which puts a duty to deliver on whoever holds one, Vermont is a delivery state, not a findability state. The directive is meant to move.
The card is how it moves, and in Vermont there is a second reason for it to. Unlike most states, the directive here can carry the funeral plan — disposition of remains and funeral goods and services. Whoever is arranging the funeral is a different person, in a different building, at a different hour from the clinician. The copy rule reaches them too.