Your Family Will Be Forced to Guess — Unless You Document Your Wishes Now
When a medical crisis strikes, Delaware's default surrogacy rules hand decision-making authority to multiple family members with equal priority. The result: disagreements, delays, and potentially a guardianship battle through the Court of Chancery that costs thousands of dollars and takes months to resolve.
Meanwhile, the state offers blank statutory forms for free — but zero guidance on completing them correctly. One invalid witness, one missing notarization, one confusion between a legal directive and a clinical order, and your carefully documented wishes become unenforceable at the worst possible moment.
The Delaware Directive Execution System
This isn't another blank form you print and hope for the best. The Delaware Advance Directive & Living Will Kit is a complete execution system that walks you from first decision to filed, enforceable documents — covering every Delaware-specific requirement that trips up DIY filers.
Where free forms give you empty boxes, this kit gives you the context, checklists, and step-by-step instructions that make the difference between a document that protects you and one that gets rejected in a crisis.
What's Inside the Kit
The full kit includes a 14-chapter guide, a quick-start checklist, and 9 standalone printable tools — 12 PDFs total:
- Complete Delaware AHCD Guide — All four statutory parts (healthcare agent, living will instructions, organ donation, funeral authority) with plain-English explanations of every clause, not just blank lines
- Witness Qualification Checklist — Delaware excludes beneficiaries, creditors, facility employees, relatives, and financially responsible parties from witnessing. This standalone printable translates 16 Del. C. § 2503 into a simple yes/no checklist so you never sign with invalid witnesses
- DMOST & DNR Coordination Guide — Your living will cannot bind EMTs during a 911 call. This standalone guide shows you exactly how to take your completed directive to your physician and establish matching medical orders that emergency responders are legally required to follow
- Healthcare Agent Selection Worksheet — A printable comparison framework for evaluating candidates, documenting alternates, and recording your final selection — so there's no ambiguity when decisions need to be made at 3 AM
- Financial vs. Medical POA Reference Card — Banks reject medical proxies every day. This side-by-side comparison prevents the trap where families discover too late that their healthcare agent cannot access bank accounts, pay bills, or manage property
- County Resource Directory — Printable contact sheet with mobile notaries, legal aid, hospital patient advocates, and state agencies across New Castle, Kent, and Sussex counties
- Emergency Wallet Cards — Printable cut-out cards your healthcare agent carries to prove legal authority during a crisis, plus instructions for submitting your directive to ChristianaCare, Beebe Healthcare, and Bayhealth electronic health records
- Medical Preferences Inventory — Fillable worksheet to think through every treatment scenario before completing Part 2 of your AHCD
- Document Location Tracker — Record where every important document is stored so your family can find them quickly in a crisis
- Family Conversation Starter — 10 guided questions to bring to a family discussion about your end-of-life wishes
- Action Plan Checklist — Step-by-step roadmap from blank form to filed, enforceable directive — immediate steps, 30-day tasks, and related documents
Who This Kit Helps
- Caregivers racing against cognitive decline — Your parent can still sign legal documents today. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. This kit gets you from blank form to legally binding directive in a single focused session
- Adults with a new diagnosis — A serious diagnosis forces decisions nobody wants to make. The kit structures those conversations and translates them into enforceable legal documents
- Retirees getting affairs in order — You've handled your will and your finances. This completes the picture — healthcare wishes documented, agents named, clinical orders coordinated with your physician
- Families preparing for hospital admission or surgery — Hospitals ask for these documents at intake. Having them ready, properly witnessed, and coordinated with clinical orders means no scrambling during an already stressful time
Why the Free State Forms Aren't Enough
The Delaware Division of Services for Aging provides blank PDF forms. National sites like eForms and Rocket Lawyer charge subscription fees for generic templates. Neither tells you:
- How to find two qualified witnesses when your family members are all excluded (they're beneficiaries, relatives, or both)
- That your living will is legally irrelevant to the EMTs who show up during a cardiac event — you need a separate physician-signed DMOST
- That Delaware imposes a 4-week "permanently unconscious" waiting period before a living will can authorize withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment
- That funeral and burial powers require notarization, while the rest of the directive does not
- That nursing home residents need a patient advocate witness or the entire document is void
These aren't edge cases. They're the exact points where real Delaware families get tripped up — and where a rejected or unenforceable directive causes the most damage.
Satisfaction Guarantee
If you're not satisfied with the clarity and completeness of the kit, email us within 30 days for a full refund. No questions, no hassle.
— Peace of Mind for Less Than a Co-Pay
An elder law attorney charges $500 to $3,000 for advance directive preparation. Court-appointed guardianship through the Court of Chancery costs even more — plus months of waiting. This kit gives you everything you need to execute legally binding documents yourself, correctly, in one afternoon.
The free checklist gives you the overview. The full kit gives you the execution system — every form, every checklist, every step explained in plain English with Delaware-specific guidance.