It’s certainly not unheard of for an older employee to return to work after a serious illness or terminally ill employees to return to work to regain a semblance of normalcy. In situations like these, it’s always to the benefit of both employee and employer to be prepared for decisions affecting their wellbeing, treatment and care. Yet so few people ever talk about or write down how they want those decisions made.

Although in your role as benefits advisors, the topic of living wills may not frequently come up, considering the growing number of terminally ill employees returning to work, it makes sense for you to be educated on advance directive documents and be able to wisely advise your clients in this area.

In broad terms, an advance directive is any document that allows a person to state in advance how they wish to be treated if they are unable to make those choices themselves. The most common advance directive is a living will. Contrary to what many people think, living wills do not have to limit treatment or “pull the plug;” they can also be used to request every medical intervention available.