advance directiven.
Reviewed by Owen Hathaway, AttorneyUpdated June 1, 2026An umbrella term for legal documents that record health-care wishes and treatment instructions before a crisis, covering scenarios from temporary incapacity to persistent vegetative state to end of life.
Advance directive is a general term for the legal documents in which a person records health-care wishes and treatment instructions before a medical crisis. It typically encompasses a living will and written instructions about resuscitation and other life-sustaining treatment.
A thorough advance directive addresses the full spectrum of incapacity: temporary, prolonged (including persistent vegetative state), and terminal. The documents can express wishes about resuscitation, but a do-not-resuscitate order is a separate medical order that a physician issues, not a document an attorney prepares.
Advance directives address what care a person wants. A medical power of attorney is a separate document that names someone to make decisions; together they form a complete plan.
Both Colorado and Wyoming recognize advance directives, but each has its own statutory forms and execution rules. Directives valid in one state are usually honored in the other, though using the resident state's form is the safer practice. Colorado also has the MOST form (Medical Orders for Scope of Treatment), a physician-signed medical order that translates a person's stated treatment wishes into immediately actionable instructions. The MOST is not an advance directive and is not prepared by an attorney; it supplements the directive and is completed by a treating physician.