RCW ch. 70.122 · ch. 11.125 · Washington
Washington: how to sign your advance directive
Washington keeps the two instruments in two chapters under different titles. The directive — Washington's word for the living will — is RCW ch. 70.122, the Natural Death Act. The health care power of attorney is RCW ch. 11.125, the Uniform Power of Attorney Act.
Why WearableDocs
In Washington, 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 Washington asks
What you need to sign in Washington
- Instruments
- Two, in separate chapters — a directive (RCW ch. 70.122) and a health care power of attorney (RCW ch. 11.125)
- Form
- Illustrative — §70.122.030: "The directive may be in the following form"
- Execution
- Directive: two witnesses OR a notary (§70.122.030) — "acknowledged before a notary public … or signed by the declarer in the presence of two witnesses." The health care power of attorney's execution rule (RCW 11.125.050) is not captured
- May not witness
- When witnesses are used, both must be disinterested: not related to the declarer by blood or marriage, and not entitled to any portion of the estate under an existing will or codicil or by operation of law. A witness may also not be the attending physician, an employee of the attending physician, an employee of a health facility in which the declarer is a patient, or anyone with a claim against the estate
- May not be your agent
- RCW 11.125.400(3) — unless the person is your spouse, state registered domestic partner, parent, adult child, brother or sister: your physicians, your physicians' employees, or the owners, administrators or employees of the health care facility or long-term care facility where you reside or receive care
- Copy rule
- No copy-equivalence rule. RCW 11.125 contains no copy, reliance or carried-device language — reliance sits at RCW 11.125.140, which is not captured. §70.122.030 requires the directive "or a copy thereof" to be made part of the patient's medical records, which is a filing duty, not an equivalence rule
- Delivery
- No delivery precondition found. §70.122.030 requires the directive or a copy to be made part of the medical records retained by the attending physician, and forwarded to the health facility when withholding or withdrawal is contemplated
- Who decides
- One for a terminal condition; two for a permanent unconscious condition. §70.122.030(1)(a): a terminal condition is diagnosed "by the attending physician"; a permanent unconscious condition "by two physicians." §70.122.030(2) requires that diagnosis in writing as a permanent part of the record
- Standard determined
- Condition — terminal condition or permanent unconscious condition
- Registry
- Yes — the Department of Health's health care declarations registry (§70.122.130). It stores the directive, a health care power of attorney, a mental health advance directive, or a department-adopted form. Filing creates no presumption of validity, and failing to file does not affect validity. The section carries two texts, effective until and from 30 June 2027; they are materially the same
- Age
- An adult. No departure from 18 recorded
- Reciprocity
- Yes — §70.122.030(3): a directive executed in another jurisdiction is valid to the extent permitted by Washington law and the federal constitution
- Revocation
- §70.122.040. Revocable at any time "without regard to the declarer's mental state or competency" — by destruction; by a signed written revocation; by a verbal expression; or, for a directive in the registry, by the online method. Written and verbal revocations take effect only on communication to the attending physician
- Oral instructions
- A verbal revocation works (§70.122.040(1)(c)). No provision for oral instructions was captured
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive. Washington is the state whose POLST programme says a device alone is not enough — see below
- Citation
- RCW ch. 70.122 · ch. 11.125
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What Washington actually recognizes
The old chapter, RCW 11.94, is repealed in full — every section, by 2016 c 209 §504, effective 1 January 2017. Forms still cite it. The rule it contained is not quotable, which matters more than it sounds: it is one of the few places in this set where a reader cannot be shown the old provision and told it is superseded, because there is nothing left to show them.
Washington also runs a statewide health care declarations registry, and the statute is unusually direct about what the registry is not. §70.122.130(2)(d): entry in the registry does not affect the document's validity, does not take the place of any requirement in law, and does not create a presumption regarding the document's validity. Filing the directive is a convenience. It is not a legal act.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for Washington
"Wear the bracelet and EMS will honour it." Washington's own POLST programme says the opposite, in the plainest sentence in this research: "bracelets/necklaces alone are not actionable." In the states with device statutes — Texas, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Wisconsin — a bracelet is a legal instrument that a responder must act on. Washington is the state that says a bracelet is not. Anyone who bought jewelry and believed the paperwork was therefore done has the position backwards.
"Put it in the registry and you are covered." §70.122.130(2)(d) is explicit about what registry entry does not do: it does not "affect the validity of the document", it does not "take the place of any requirements in law necessary to make the submitted document legal", and it does not "create a presumption regarding the validity of the document." Subsection (2)(b) says the same from the other side: failing to submit a declaration to the registry does not affect its validity. The registry is a place the document can be found. It is not a place the document is made.
"Cite RCW 11.94." It was repealed in full by 2016 c 209 §504, effective 1 January 2017 — every section, including 11.94.040 on liability for reliance on a power of attorney. Washington's health care power of attorney is RCW ch. 11.125. There is no older provision left to read, which means a form citing 11.94 is citing a chapter with nothing in it.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in Washington
WearableDocs is how your Washington advance directive gets found. Washington treats the carried document and the carried bracelet alike — neither is actionable on its own — so a carried advance directive gets no legal force, and a carried DNR does not either.
That second half is the unusual part. In most states with a device rule, the bracelet is a legal instrument. Washington's POLST programme states the position flatly: "bracelets/necklaces alone are not actionable." Nothing about a Washington bracelet, by itself, changes what a responder must do. So the familiar split — device carries the DNR, paper carries the directive — collapses here, and both instruments end up in the same position: they work when they reach a person who reads them.
RCW 11.125 contains no copy, reliance or carried-device language at all, and its reliance provision sits at RCW 11.125.140, which is not captured, so nothing may be claimed about it. What the chapter does say, at §11.125.400(3), is who may not be your agent. What it does not say is that carrying the document means anything.
Which leaves the registry, and the statute's own description of it: it does not affect validity, it does not substitute for any legal requirement, and it creates no presumption of validity. Washington has built a statewide place to find a directive and has been careful to say that finding one is not the same as the document being valid. The card does the same work at the same scale — it puts the document in front of the person who needs it — and it makes the same honest claim. Nothing more.