W. Va. Code §16-30-1 et seq. · West Virginia
West Virginia: how to sign your advance directive
West Virginia is one of the states that publishes the choice rather than making it. It has a living will, a medical power of attorney, and a statutory combined form — three forms, and you may use any of them. The combined form is the one to reach for if you want one document; the separate forms are there if you want one without the other.
Why WearableDocs
In West Virginia, 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 West Virginia asks
What you need to sign in West Virginia
- Instruments
- Three published forms — living will · medical power of attorney · a statutory combined form
- Form
- Illustrative
- Execution
- Two witnesses AND a notary (§16-30-4(a))
- May not witness
- Anyone related to you by blood or marriage; estate beneficiaries; whoever is financially responsible for you; your attending physician; your representative. Family is barred
- May not be your agent
- A treating provider; a non-relative employee of one; a facility operator; a non-relative employee of an operator
- Copy rule
- None found
- Delivery
- No copy-equivalence and no precondition found in the captured text. The principal or representative must notify the provider. Caveat: §16-30-10 "Reliance on authority of living will…" is a title only in the corpus, and a reliance-style limit on duty could sit there
- Who decides
- One qualified person, who need not be a physician
- Registry
- None
- Age
- No departure from 18 recorded. §16-30-25 covers mature minors
- Reciprocity
- Yes — §16-30-21, disjunctive
- Revocation
- Divorce revokes the agent designation
- Carried device
- Nothing for the directive. DNR is issued as a card signed by a provider — a DNR instrument, not the directive
- Citation
- W. Va. Code §16-30-1 et seq.
Read from the enacted statute, 2026-09-18.
The instrument
What West Virginia actually recognizes
The execution rule is the part that catches people, and it is the reason West Virginia appears in every list of state-by-state differences:
**Two witnesses and a notary.** §16-30-4(a) requires both.
Most states offer an either/or. West Virginia does not, and the guidance online routinely gets this wrong.
What the popular guides get wrong
Corrections for West Virginia
"Two witnesses or a notary." This is the correction West Virginia most needs published. The statute requires witnesses and a notary (§16-30-4(a)). Two witnesses and no notary produces a document that does not meet the execution rule — and it is the version most commonly described.
"A friend or family member can witness." In West Virginia, family is barred by blood or marriage, along with estate beneficiaries, whoever is financially responsible for you, and your attending physician. This is a narrower witness pool than most states, and it is easy to fail without noticing.
Carried on you
What a WearableDocs card does in West Virginia
WearableDocs is how your West Virginia advance directive gets found. The one carried instrument West Virginia does have belongs to a different decision.
The state does issue a DNR card signed by a provider, which is a separate instrument doing a separate job — it speaks to resuscitation, not to your agent or your instructions. Do not let the existence of a DNR card on a page imply the directive travels the same way. It does not.
West Virginia also has no copy-equivalence rule in the captured text and no delivery precondition. The statute puts the duty on you instead: the principal or representative must notify the provider. There is no provision making a copy the equal of the original, so the original is the document that matters — and the person who has to produce it is you, at the moment someone asks.