When Someone You Love Is Seriously Ill

Three separate things to think about

When someone is seriously ill, three kinds of decisions tend to blur together. It helps to pull them apart, because each one belongs to different people and runs on a different clock.

Medical care

Treatment, comfort care and hospice decisions belong to the person, their doctors and the care team. This site doesn’t give medical advice.

Legal and care paperwork

An advance health care directive names who can make health decisions and records the person’s wishes. It’s worth doing while the person can still sign it.

Funeral wishes

Burial or cremation, a service or not, and who should decide. These can be written down now. Writing them down doesn’t mean buying anything.

The Utah advance health care directive

Utah has an optional state form for an advance health care directive, set out in Utah Code §75A-3-303 (the current version took effect September 1, 2024). It has four parts:

1. Naming an agent: the person who can make health care decisions if you can’t, plus an alternate if you want one.
2. Health care wishes: what you want if you can’t speak for yourself, including whether to prolong life or focus on comfort.
3. Revoking it: how to cancel or replace the directive later.
4. Signing: your signature and one adult witness.

The witness can’t be a relative by blood or marriage, the agent or alternate agent, someone who stands to inherit or benefit from the death, someone financially responsible for the person’s medical care, or the person’s health care provider or facility administrator. Check the current form for the full list.

The Utah Commission on Aging links to the form and instructions. For someone who is already seriously ill, the care team may also talk with you about a POLST, a medical order about life-sustaining treatment that a clinician fills out with the patient. Ask the care team whether it fits.

Who decides about the funeral

In Utah, the right to decide what happens after a death follows an order set in Utah Code §58-9-602. First comes someone your loved one named in writing for this purpose (or on a military DD Form 93). After that it goes to the spouse, then the personal representative named in a will, then a majority of the adult children, then parents, then a majority of siblings, and on down the list.

If the person wants someone specific to make these decisions, or wants to avoid a split between siblings, putting that in writing now is the step that settles it. See talking with family about funeral wishes and planning funeral wishes.

What you may want to gather

None of this is urgent. If you have a quiet hour, these are the things families most often wish they’d had in one place:

• The person’s wishes in writing: burial or cremation, service, faith traditions, music, who to invite. A planning guide.
• A short contact list: family, close friends, clergy or bishop, employer, and the care team.
• Key documents: ID, Social Security number, insurance policies, will or trust, and any existing prepaid funeral contract. Important papers to organize.
• For a veteran, discharge papers (DD-214). They’re needed for VA burial benefits. VA burial and memorial benefits.
• Any cemetery plot already owned, and its deed or paperwork.

Questions to ask the care team

Hospice nurses and social workers answer these questions every week. Asking early means nobody has to guess later.

1. When the time comes, who do we call first?
2. Does hospice contact the funeral home, or do we?
3. Is there a social worker or chaplain we can talk with now?
4. What support does hospice offer the family afterward?
5. Is there anything about the person’s care wishes we should write down?

Medicare’s hospice benefit includes grief and loss counseling for the patient and family. For what happens at the time of death in each setting, see who to call when someone dies.

Looking at funeral homes now

Some families like to compare funeral homes while things are calm. Others would rather wait. Both are fine. If you do look now:

• Funeral homes must give prices over the phone and hand you a General Price List in person. You don’t have to give your name. See your right to an itemized price list.
• Choosing a funeral home in advance doesn’t mean paying in advance. See choosing a funeral provider in advance.
• Prepaying is a separate financial decision. If you consider it, ask whether the plan is funded by a trust or by insurance, and whether any insurance policy has a waiting period. See how prepaid funeral plans work and the waiting-period gap.

Salt Lake County prices, compared side by side, are on how to choose a funeral home and compare prices.

Where to get help

Common questions