Indiana Living Will Form: What It Covers and How to Make It Legal

A living will in Indiana is not a standalone document anymore. Since Senate Enrolled Act 204 consolidated Indiana's healthcare planning framework on January 1, 2023, your living will declaration is one component of a unified advance directive — not a separate form you file independently.

This matters because families still download old templates that treat the living will as its own document. Those fragmented forms create confusion at hospitals and can leave critical gaps in your legal coverage.

What an Indiana Living Will Actually Controls

Your living will declaration addresses one specific scenario: what happens when you have a terminal condition and death is imminent. Under Indiana Code § 16-36-4, you choose between two positions:

Option 1 — The Living Will Declaration. You instruct your physician and family that if you are diagnosed with an incurable, terminal injury or disease, life-prolonging procedures should be withheld or withdrawn. This covers CPR, mechanical ventilation, artificial nutrition and hydration, and similar interventions.

Option 2 — The Life-Prolonging Procedures Declaration. You explicitly state that you want every available medical intervention used to extend your life as long as medically possible, regardless of terminal diagnosis.

These are opposite choices. You must pick one. Ambiguity here is what causes hospital standoffs between family members and medical teams.

The Pregnancy Exception You Cannot Ignore

Indiana law imposes a strict restriction: any living will declaration instructing the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment is automatically void during pregnancy. This is not optional or negotiable.

If you are a woman of childbearing age and want your HCR to have authority to withdraw treatment even during pregnancy, you must write an explicit authorization into your advance directive. Without that specific language, the default kicks in and your living will provisions are suspended for the duration of the pregnancy.

Witness Rules for Living Will Declarations

The witness requirements for living will sections are stricter than for the general HCR appointment. When your directive includes instructions about withdrawing life support, neither witness can be:

• Your spouse, parent, or child
• Your named Health Care Representative
• Anyone who would inherit from your estate
• Anyone financially responsible for your medical care

At least one of the two witnesses must be unrelated to you by blood, marriage, or adoption. Getting this wrong does not produce a "partially valid" document — it voids the living will declaration entirely.

How a Living Will Differs from a POST Form

Your living will expresses general preferences and operates primarily in hospital settings. But it is not binding on emergency responders.

An Indiana POST (Physician Orders for Scope of Treatment) form, by contrast, is a direct medical order signed by your physician. It travels with you and is legally enforceable across all settings — ambulances, hospice, nursing homes, and hospitals. POST forms are recommended for people with advanced illness where death within 12 to 24 months would not surprise their clinician.

The living will sets your broad intentions. The POST form translates those intentions into specific medical orders that first responders must follow.

Making Your Living Will Legally Binding

Your living will must be part of a properly executed advance directive — written, dated, and signed in the presence of a notary or two qualified witnesses. Remote execution via live video is permitted under SEA 204, and telephonic execution is available as a last resort when video is impossible.

There is no mandatory state form. Indiana allows you to write your wishes in plain English. The legal validity comes from proper execution, not from using a government-issued template.

The Indiana Advance Directive & Living Will Kit includes both the living will declaration and the life-prolonging procedures declaration with clear instructions on the stricter witness requirements that apply to end-of-life provisions.

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