Alternatives to the Free Advance Care Directive Forms in Victoria

If you have looked at the free advance care directive forms published by Health.vic or the Office of the Public Advocate and felt stuck, you are not alone. The forms are legally valid — the Medical Treatment Planning and Decisions Act 2016 sets the statutory framework, and the government forms comply with it. But legal validity and practical usability are different things. The instructional directive section is blank. There is no guidance on clinical phrasing, no witnessing protocol, and no help coordinating the ACD with a Medical Treatment Decision Maker appointment or an Enduring Power of Attorney. Most people who download the free forms never complete them.

Here are the alternatives, ranked by cost and comprehensiveness, with honest tradeoffs for each.

Option 1: Structured Advance Care Planning Kit

Cost: (one-time) Time to completion: Same day for drafting; 1–2 weeks including GP witnessing appointment Best for: Adults with clear treatment preferences and straightforward family structures

A planning kit fills the gap between the blank statutory form and a solicitor's office. The Victoria Advance Directive & Living Will Kit provides the specific structure missing from the government forms: treatment-specific clinical phrasing templates (CPR, ventilation, dialysis, nutrition, antibiotics), a GP witnessing consultation script with documentation checklist and fee expectations, an MTDM appointment form with an interview script for confirming your appointee understands their role, and a values directive framework for documenting quality-of-life preferences.

Tradeoff: A kit is self-directed — no solicitor reviews the final document. The directive's legal validity does not depend on legal drafting, but if your family structure is complex (blended families, contested capacity, cross-border assets), a solicitor provides tailored advice a kit cannot.

Option 2: Hospital-Based Advance Care Planning Programs

Cost: Free (at participating hospitals) Time to completion: 2–6 weeks depending on program availability and appointment scheduling Best for: Patients already in the healthcare system, especially those with chronic or terminal conditions

Several Victorian hospital networks run advance care planning clinics — including Austin Health, Western Health, Monash Health, and some regional health services. These programs pair you with a trained facilitator (usually a nurse or social worker) who guides the conversation, helps document treatment preferences, and sometimes arranges the GP witnessing appointment within the hospital.

Tradeoff: Availability is inconsistent — not all hospitals offer the program, and wait times can stretch to weeks. The programs are designed for people already engaged with the health system (admitted patients, outpatients with chronic conditions, palliative care referrals). A healthy 55-year-old doing proactive planning may not qualify or may face a long wait. The clinical phrasing support varies by facilitator — some are excellent, others use generic templates. The output is typically a hospital-formatted Advance Care Plan (ACP) that feeds into the facility's electronic health record, which may or may not translate into a portable statutory ACD under the 2016 Act.

Option 3: Elder Law Solicitor

Cost: $200–$250 + GST for MTDM appointment alone; $800–$2,500+ for a comprehensive ACD + MTDM + EPOA package Time to completion: 2–4 weeks (initial consult, drafting, review meeting, execution) Best for: Blended families, complex estates, contested capacity, cross-border assets

A solicitor provides tailored legal drafting that integrates the advance care directive with your EPOA and Will. This matters when family dynamics are complicated — if siblings are likely to dispute the MTDM appointment, if a second marriage creates competing interests between a current partner and children from a prior relationship, or if the estate involves trusts or cross-jurisdictional holdings.

Tradeoff: Cost is the primary barrier. At $350–$550 per hour, a comprehensive advance care planning session burns through $800 quickly, and many families delay indefinitely because the price feels disproportionate to the perceived urgency. Solicitors draft legally precise language, but the phrasing may need clinical translation at the bedside — legal terms and clinical orders are different systems, and an instruction that is legally correct may still be ambiguous to a treating team working from Goals of Patient Care summaries at 2 a.m.

Option 4: Advance Care Planning Australia (ACPA) Resources

Cost: Free Time to completion: Variable — self-paced online resources Best for: Initial orientation and understanding what advance care planning involves nationally

ACPA provides national resources, including an online advance care planning tool, educational videos, and links to state-specific forms. The content is high-quality and well-structured.

Tradeoff: National frameworks inevitably dilute state-specific requirements. ACPA covers all Australian states and territories, which means Victoria's specific rules — the mandatory GP witnessing requirement, the strict prohibition on remote witnessing, the MTDM terminology that replaced "Medical Power of Attorney" — can get lost in the broader overview. Families who rely solely on ACPA may not realise that Victorian requirements are stricter than other states, leading to avoidable mistakes at the witnessing stage.

Option 5: Legal Aid and Community Legal Centres

Cost: Free (means-tested eligibility) Time to completion: Weeks to months depending on availability Best for: Low-income Victorians who qualify for legal aid services

Victoria Legal Aid and community legal centres (such as Seniors Rights Victoria) provide free legal assistance for advance care planning, including document drafting and witnessing coordination. Some centres run regular advance care planning clinics.

Tradeoff: Eligibility is means-tested — not everyone qualifies. Wait times can be significant, and the service may prioritise urgent cases (elder abuse, capacity disputes) over proactive planning. The depth of clinical phrasing guidance varies by practitioner — legal aid solicitors are skilled at the legal requirements but may not provide the treatment-specific language that emergency departments need.

Comparison at a Glance

Who These Alternatives Are For

• Anyone who downloaded the free forms from Health.vic and stopped at the blank instructional directive section
• Adults doing proactive advance care planning who want structured guidance, not a blank page
• Adult children helping a parent complete a directive before cognitive decline narrows the capacity window
• De facto and same-sex partners who need formal MTDM appointments rather than relying on proving their relationship during a crisis
• People recovering from a hospitalisation who realised they had no documented wishes

Who Should Stick with Free Forms

• People who are comfortable drafting legal documents independently and have a GP willing to witness without additional guidance
• Families who have already had detailed conversations about treatment preferences and just need the statutory form to formalise them
• Anyone already working with a solicitor on estate planning and adding an ACD to the package

Frequently Asked Questions

Are the free government forms legally valid?

Yes — completely. The forms published by Health.vic and the Office of the Public Advocate comply with the Medical Treatment Planning and Decisions Act 2016. The legal validity is not the issue. The issue is that a blank form with no clinical phrasing guidance, no witnessing protocol, and no MTDM coordination produces directives that clinicians struggle to follow in emergencies.

Can I use a kit and then have a solicitor review it?

Yes. Completing a kit first and bringing the drafted directive to a solicitor saves significant consultation time. You arrive with a clear brief — specific treatment decisions, a chosen MTDM, documented values — instead of starting from scratch at $350–$550 per hour.

Which alternative is fastest?

A planning kit. You can draft the directive, complete the MTDM appointment form, and prepare the GP witnessing documentation in a single afternoon. The GP appointment itself typically takes one to two weeks to book, but you arrive fully prepared rather than starting the process at the clinic.

What if I have started the free forms but got stuck?

That is the most common scenario. The blank instructional directive section is where most people stop. A planning kit provides the treatment-specific phrasing templates and clinical language that the free forms lack — you can transfer your existing work into the structured framework without starting over.

Do any of these alternatives handle the GP witnessing appointment?

Only a planning kit and a hospital-based program directly address the witnessing logistics. A solicitor may coordinate witnessing but often delegates it back to the client. Free forms and ACPA resources mention the requirement without providing practical guidance on securing the appointment.

The Victoria Advance Directive & Living Will Kit sits in the practical middle ground — more structured than the free forms, more clinically specific than a solicitor, more accessible than a hospital program, and available the afternoon you decide to act.

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