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My thoughts on the Terri Schiavo situation
A look through the Florida Health Care Advanced Directives Statute (Ch. 765, Florida Statutes) provided me with some important insight into the Terri Schiavo case: An advance directive to physicians or living will might not have helped Terri Schiavo at all.
Why?
Because apparently the statute allowing their use was not enacted until 1992. Here’s the legislative history for Section 765.301 (”Short Title”):
s. 4, ch. 92-199; s. 24, ch. 99-331.
See the “92″ and the “99″? That would mean that the act was offered as a bill in 1992 and the act was amended by a bill offered in 1999.
According to the timeline at the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation’s website, Terri Schiavo collapsed in 1990. That would be two years before the Act authorizing the use of living wills in the State of Florida.
What does this mean?
It means that this case would probably still be litigated today because Terri Schiavo would have had no reason to create a living will. She could not make that advanced determination because the option was not available to her when she entered her present condition.
This does nothing to lessen the importance of these documents. They are easy to fill out and important to have if something should happen to you and you are unable to make your own wishes known. Here are the provisions of the one I have had in place since September of 1999:
- If at any time I should have an incurable or irreversible condition caused by injury, disease, or illness certified to be a terminal condition by two physicians in addition to my attending physician, and if the application of life‑sustaining procedures would serve only to artificially prolong the moment of my death and if my attending physician determines that my death is imminent or will result within a relatively short time without application of life‑sustaining procedures, I direct that such procedures be withheld or withdrawn, and that I be permitted to die naturally.
- In the absence of my ability to give directions regarding the use of life‑sustaining procedures, it is my intention that this directive shall be honored by my family and physicians as the final expression of my legal right to refuse medical or surgical treatment and accept the consequences from such refusal.
- Further, I authorize and direct that any and all of my organs which may be safely removed without marring my body be donated for transplant into those in need of such organs or use in the interest of furthering medical science.
- This directive shall be in effect until it is revoked.
- I understand the full import of this directive and I am emotionally and mentally competent to make this directive.
- I understand that I may revoke this directive at any time.
That’s it. That’s all there is to one of these, at least here in Texas. It’s a standard form promulgated by the Texas Legislature (my only changes were to add the concurrance of my attending physician so that three (3) doctors have to come to an agreement and to delete the part about it’s efficacy if I am pregnant when incapacitated — since I’m male, that won’t ever be a problem, right?) and they’re widely available. If you want to use this one, I would certainly not object to it, although there are additional clauses that you should see (see the standard form I linked to for those — including one dealing with feeding tubes).
My biggest question is why does Michael Schiavo not just divorce Terri. The only answer I can come up with is greed. By not divorcing her he likely ends up with the lion’s share of her estate. Remember that the medical malpractice money went to Terri (or probably Michael as Terri’s “next friend”) and by divorcing her he would find himself divested of the money that would flow to him as her widower.
Yes, at one time he did offer to donate “his inheritance” to charity if her parents would withdraw their objections to his allowing her to starve to death, but remember also that he, at one time, also told a jury that he needed a lot of money so that he could take care of Terri and see to her physical rehabilitation. Seeing as how he stopped her physical rehabilitation in 1991 and has moved on with his life in every respect except divorcing Terri since then, I would not have held out much hope that he would not change his mind with regard to donating the money to charity as well.
It’s sad all the way around. There are those who have held onto hope and would do anything to care for her and then there is the man who is supposed to love her and now appears to desire to kill her for her money. And guess who has all of the legal rights in the case? That’s right: the one who wants to kill her for the money.
MickC @ March 22, 2005