Is Five Wishes Valid in Arizona?

Five Wishes is a powerful advance planning tool, giving you a Power of Attorney (PoA) form and a Living Will in a single easy-to-understand document. It’s becoming increasingly common across the United States and is a fantastic alternative to regular advance planning forms.

Yet, there are still debates about Five Wishes.

It looks different than other advance directives and uses different language, which occasionally leads to problems in getting it accepted.

Today, we’re looking at one simple question – Is Five Wishes valid in Arizona?

The Five Wishes website says their document meets requirements in all states except New Hampshire, Texas, Ohio, and New Hampshire. That’s great news, but we need to look beyond what Five Wishes itself says and consider the legal requirements in Arizona.

The Power of Attorney Component

Let’s begin with the PoA aspect of Five Wishes.

Arizona’s law gives the following requirements for creating a Health Care Power of Attorney:

None of these requirements speak to PoA format or language style. Requirement 1 simply states that the document needs to clearly indicate that the person intends to create a Health Care PoA. Five Wishes does this in the first part of Wish 1:

Requirements 2 and 3 relate to how the document is signed. Five Wishes has a single signature page at the end of the document, which covers both the PoA and the Living Will.

For Requirement 2, we have this section:

Requirement 3 is the only slightly complex part.

Arizona’s requirements are that the document be witnessed OR notarized by at least one adult, while Five Wishes wants two adults to sign the form.

While the requirements are a little different, there are no issues here. If you follow Five Wishes as written, the form will still be witnessed by two adults, which meets Arizona’s requirements of being witnessed or notarized by at least one adult.

Arizona’s law also mentions Subsection B, which can be seen below. This talks about what happens if someone can’t physically sign their own form.

Five Wishes doesn’t talk about that situation at all. However, this only applies in a small number of cases and the required information can be written onto the document.

Finally, Arizona’s law highlights who cannot be a witness for a PoA, as follows:

Five Wishes has similar restrictions. There are actually more rules here than for Arizona, because Five Wishes is designed to cover all states. So, if you follow these requirements in Five Wishes, you’ll certainly be meeting the ones for Arizona too.

That’s it for the Healthcare Power of Attorney.

As you can see, Five Wishes meets all the legal requirements in Arizona, provided you choose appropriate witnesses.

The Living Will

For the Living Will component, Arizona law provides the following information:

A sample Living Will is provided (which you can see here), but this doesn’t include any extra requirements.

As a result, any language can be used to create a Living Will. It simply needs to be signed and witnessed using the same PoA rules we discussed above.

Final Thoughts

Arizona doesn’t have many specific requirements for a Healthcare Power of Attorney and even fewer for a Living Will. Five Wishes easily meets all the criteria, making it valid throughout the state.