SA Advance Directive Kit — Document Your Wishes Under the 2024 Reforms

Your Family Shouldn't Have to Guess — and SA Law Shouldn't Have to Decide for Them

A parent is admitted to Flinders Medical Centre after a fall. The treating doctor asks about their treatment preferences. Nobody can produce an Advance Care Directive. There's no appointed Substitute Decision-Maker. The hospital defaults to the statutory hierarchy under the Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Act 1995 — and the "person responsible" turns out to be a distant relative the family barely knows, not the daughter who's been managing care for three years.

This happens in South Australian hospitals regularly. Not because families don't care, but because SA's ACD system — the most comprehensive in Australia — demands clinical precision in how wishes are documented. Write vague instructions, and clinicians can legally demote your binding refusals to advisory value statements. Get the signing order wrong, and the entire document is invalid. Use a disqualified witness, and it has to be completely redone.

The SA Clinical Precision System

The South Australia Advance Directive & Living Will Kit bridges the gap between the blank government ACD form and the clinical reality of how SA hospitals make treatment decisions. It translates the legal requirements of the Advance Care Directives Act 2013 (as amended March 2024) into a step-by-step completion system that produces documents clinicians must follow — so your treatment refusals are classified as binding, not advisory, and your SDM appointments survive challenge.

What's Inside

• 17-chapter planning guide (guide.pdf) — SA's consolidated ACD under the Advance Care Directives Act 2013 (as amended March 2024), including the suicide and self-harm override, digital-copy validation, SDM sequential ordering, clinical activation, VAD exclusion, and EPA complement
• Treatment Decision Worksheet (treatment-decision-worksheet.pdf) — fill-in consent, refusal, or SDM-fallback for CPR, ventilation, nutrition, dialysis, and related treatments, plus wording to copy onto the SA Health ACD form
• SDM Appointment Worksheet (sdm-appointment-worksheet.pdf) — name up to four Substitute Decision-Makers in sequential order, record limits, and track acceptance dates before witnessing
• Signing and Witnessing Checklist (signing-witnessing-checklist.pdf) — room-ready sequence: SDM acceptance first, Information Statement, you sign, then the witness signs
• Conflict-of-Interest Witness Verification (witness-verification-checklist.pdf) — authorised classes (JP, legal practitioner, registered health practitioner, social worker, police officer, teacher) and the disqualifiers that void the ACD
• Document Storage and Distribution Log (document-distribution-log.pdf) — My Health Record upload, five certified copies, GP, hospital, SDMs, and the original kept out of a bank box
• Wallet Card (wallet-card.pdf) — cut-out card with SDM contacts and where the original ACD is stored
• Family Conversation Planner (family-conversation-planner.pdf) — one sheet per conversation so relatives hear your binding refusals before an ICU dispute
• EPA Coordination Worksheet (epa-coordination-worksheet.pdf) — coverage-gap check between the ACD and an Enduring Power of Attorney under the Powers of Attorney and Agency Act 1984, plus Land Services SA registration
• Post-Death Estate Transition Timeline (post-death-timeline.pdf) — death certificates via Consumer and Business Services, the $15,000 direct bank release under Section 100 of the Succession Act 2023, Centrelink notification, CourtSA probate fees, and the six-month distribution window
• Revocation and Update Checklist (revocation-update-checklist.pdf) — replace (do not edit) an ACD, or cancel without replacement, then notify everyone who holds a copy
• 20-item quick-start checklist (checklist.pdf) — one-page action plan from choosing SDMs through My Health Record upload

Who This Is For

• Adults planning ahead — you're healthy and competent, but you want treatment preferences documented in clinically precise language before a crisis forces decisions onto family members who may not know what you'd want
• Adult children coordinating a parent's care — a parent's health is declining, an aged care facility is asking for documents, and you need to secure legally valid ACD and SDM appointments before capacity is lost and SACAT guardianship becomes the only option
• Regional and remote SA families — you live in the Barossa, Riverland, Iron Triangle, Eyre Peninsula, or another area without easy access to Adelaide solicitors, and you need to complete everything locally with witnesses available in your community
• Families updating after the 2024 amendments — the March 2024 reforms changed the suicide and self-harm override, the digital copy validation rules, and the SDM sequential ordering system, and you need to confirm your existing ACD still functions as intended under current law

Why the Free Government Forms Aren't Enough

The SA Health ACD form and the Office of the Public Advocate information sheets are the correct statutory templates. You should use them. But they come with no execution guidance — and the most common failures aren't about choosing the wrong form. They're about how the form is completed:

• Treatment refusals require clinically precise language to qualify as "binding refusals" under the Act — vague instructions like "no heroic measures" get demoted to advisory value statements that doctors can override
• SDMs must complete and sign their acceptance before the appointer signs in front of the witness — reverse the order and the entire document is invalid
• Family members, named SDMs, will beneficiaries, treating health professionals, and aged care facility staff are all disqualified from witnessing — but the form doesn't include a witness verification procedure
• SA has no centralized register for ACDs, so unless you proactively upload to My Health Record, your directive may not be accessible during the emergency that triggers it

The kit doesn't replace the statutory forms — it wraps them in the procedural guidance and clinical drafting tools that make the difference between a document that controls your care and one that gets set aside.

Your Purchase Is Protected

If the kit doesn't give you a clear, actionable system for completing your SA advance care plan, email [email protected] and we'll make it right.

Start Now

Download the free 20-item quick-start checklist to see every step you need to take — then get the full kit for the 17-chapter guide, Treatment Decision Worksheet, SDM Appointment Worksheet, Signing and Witnessing Checklist, and Witness Verification Checklist.

An Adelaide estate-planning solicitor charges $495 to $1,430 for a complete advance care document set. This kit gives you the same level of procedural precision — for less than a single GP copayment.