Florida Living Will Form: Requirements, Execution Rules, and 2026 Updates

A Florida living will is not a general wishlist about your medical care. It is a narrow, legally binding document that kicks in only under three specific clinical conditions — and only when you can no longer speak for yourself.

Getting the form is easy. Getting it executed correctly is where families make costly mistakes.

When a Florida Living Will Takes Effect

Under Florida Statutes § 765.302, your living will activates only when two conditions are met simultaneously:

1. You have been determined by your attending physician to lack the capacity to make your own healthcare decisions
2. You have been diagnosed with a terminal condition, an end-stage condition, or you are in a persistent vegetative state

If you are incapacitated but not terminal — for example, you are in a medically induced coma after a car accident with a full expected recovery — your living will does not govern your care. Your healthcare surrogate makes decisions based on your known wishes.

This narrow activation scope surprises many people who assume a living will covers every possible medical scenario. It does not. It governs only the refusal or continuation of life-prolonging procedures when recovery is no longer medically possible.

What You Can Specify

Florida's statutory living will form (§ 765.303) allows you to instruct your physicians to:

• Withhold or withdraw life-prolonging procedures — ventilators, feeding tubes, dialysis, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation
• Continue comfort care — pain medication, palliative treatment, and hydration for comfort
• Provide or refuse artificial nutrition and hydration — this must be specifically addressed because Florida courts have treated tube feeding as a separate category from other procedures

You can customize these instructions. Some people want pain medication continued but no ventilator. Others want hydration but no feeding tube. The form accommodates these distinctions.

Execution Rules: Where Most DIY Plans Fail

A Florida living will must be:

1. In writing — oral declarations are not legally recognized
2. Signed by the declarant (you) while you have legal capacity
3. Witnessed by two adults who are present at the time of signing

The witness rules are strict under § 765.302:

• At least one witness must not be your spouse or a blood relative
• Neither witness can be the person you have designated as your healthcare surrogate or alternate surrogate

A notary is not required, but notarization strengthens the document's acceptance — particularly if your surrogate needs to present it to an out-of-state facility or a skeptical hospital compliance office.

The most common execution error: both witnesses are family members. If your spouse and your adult child both witness your signing, the document is technically deficient. One witness must be an unrelated adult — a neighbor, a coworker, a friend.

The Relationship Between Your Living Will and Other Documents

A living will works in concert with two other documents:

• Healthcare surrogate designation — names the person who makes decisions when you cannot. Your surrogate must follow your living will instructions if they exist
• Pre-hospital DNRO (Form DH 1896) — the yellow-paper form that prevents EMS from performing CPR outside a hospital. A living will does not instruct paramedics

Without a surrogate designation, hospitals fall back to a statutory priority list (spouse → adult children → parents → siblings). Without a DNRO, your living will preferences are invisible to first responders.

Revoking or Updating Your Living Will

You can revoke a Florida living will at any time by:

• Physically destroying the document
• Writing a signed, witnessed revocation
• Verbally telling your attending physician (who must document it in your medical record)
• Executing a new living will — the most recent version supersedes all prior versions

Florida has no expiration date on living wills. A form executed in 2010 remains valid in 2026 — but medical technology and your personal preferences change. Reviewing your living will every three to five years, or after any major health event, is standard practice.

The 2026 Probate Connection

The 2026 legislative reforms (CS/HB 1337) doubled the summary administration threshold from $75,000 to $150,000 for estates of people dying on or after July 1, 2026. While this is a probate change, it affects advance directive planning because families handling both the medical and estate-planning process simultaneously benefit from understanding which probate track their estate falls into.

The Florida Advance Directive & Living Will Kit covers the living will alongside the surrogate designation, DNRO protocol, and a pre-need guardian declaration — the complete set of documents Florida families need.

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