The advance health care directive form Utah uses is the optional form in Utah Code Section 75A-9-110. It lets you name a health care agent and write down your treatment wishes. Utah replaced its old directive law on January 1, 2026, so the form most websites still hand out is outdated.

Last updated: August 2026

What Is an Advance Health Care Directive in Utah?

An advance health care directive is a written document that does two jobs. It appoints a person, called your agent, to make medical decisions for you if you cannot make them yourself. It also records your own instructions about the care you do and do not want.

Utah law treats those as two separate tools that usually travel in one document. The appointment of an agent is a power of attorney for health care, governed by Section 75A-9-107. The written wishes are health care instructions, governed by Section 75A-9-106. You can do one, the other, or both.

The directive only takes over when you lack capacity to make a decision. As long as you can understand and communicate a choice, your choice controls. Your agent does not get to overrule you while you are able to speak for yourself.

A study of more than 795,000 Americans found that 63 percent had not completed any advance directive. Only 33.4 percent had designated a health care power of attorney.

Yadav et al., Health Affairs (2017), via PubMed

Did Utah Change Its Advance Health Care Directive Law in 2026?

Yes. This is the part almost every other page about this form gets wrong. On January 1, 2026, Utah repealed its Advance Health Care Directive Act and enacted the Uniform Health Care Decisions Act in its place. The change came from Senate Bill 134 in the 2025 General Session.

The citation history is genuinely confusing, which is why so much stale material is circulating. Utah’s directive statute lived at Section 75-2a-117 for years. On September 1, 2024, a recodification moved it to Section 75A-3-303. Then, sixteen months later, the entire chapter was repealed and rebuilt as Title 75A, Chapter 9. That is two renumberings and one full replacement in under two years.

Here is the practical test. Open any Utah advance directive form or explainer you find online and look at the statute in the header. If it says 75-2a-117, you are reading a form keyed to a statute that has not existed since 2024 and a body of law that was repealed in 2026. As of August 2026, that includes a large share of the Utah law firm pages, form mills, and hospital handouts that rank for this search.

Where Do You Get the Advance Health Care Directive Form Utah Uses?

The form itself is printed inside the statute. Section 75A-9-110 sets out the full text of the optional form, and reading the statute is the most reliable way to see the current version. The statute says the form “may be used,” so it is genuinely optional. Utah does not require you to use any particular document.

That optional status matters more than people expect. Because the form is not mandatory, a directive you draft yourself is valid as long as it meets the execution requirements in Section 75A-9-107. The form is a convenience and a safe harbor, not a gatekeeper. Hospitals sometimes tell patients otherwise, and they are wrong about that.

Be careful with downloadable templates during this transition. Utah agencies, hospital systems, and nonprofit aging organizations are all working through their own update cycles, and several widely used Utah resources were still distributing pre-2026 materials well into this year. A form built on the old law is not automatically void, but it asks you the wrong questions and prints the wrong witness warnings. When you compare templates, check the statute reference first: the advance health care directive form Utah recognizes today points to Section 75A-9-110, not to anything in Title 75.

What Is on the New Utah Advance Health Care Directive Form?

The new form is organized into six lettered parts. It is longer than the old one and it asks better questions, because it separates what you want from how firmly you want it.

Part B is the biggest practical improvement. The old form made you initial exactly one of four options, which forced people into a single blunt choice. The new form asks separately about treatment, about food and liquids through a tube, and about pain relief that might shorten your life, and it lets you mark every condition that applies. It then asks how important staying alive, avoiding pain, and staying independent are to you, on a three-point scale. That gives your agent something to reason from when your instructions do not squarely cover the situation.

Part C carries two powers your agent will not have unless you grant them explicitly. Your agent cannot admit you as a voluntary patient to a mental health facility unless you initial that box and write in a day limit. Your agent also cannot place you in a nursing home for more than 100 days over your objection, when you are not terminally ill and your needs could be met elsewhere, unless you initial that box. Leaving them blank is a real decision, not an oversight.

Who Can Witness an Advance Health Care Directive Form in Utah?

You need one adult witness, and only if you are naming an agent. Under Section 75A-9-107, the witness must reasonably believe you are acting voluntarily and knowingly, and must be present when you sign or when you confirm the document reflects your wishes.

The disqualification list is now short. Your witness cannot be the agent you named, cannot be the agent’s spouse or cohabitant, and cannot be an owner, operator, employee, or contractor of a nursing home or assisted living facility if you live there or are receiving care there. That is the whole list.

Compare that to the old rule, which barred anyone related to you by blood or marriage, anyone who might inherit from you, anyone named on your life insurance or a payable-on-death account, anyone who would benefit financially at your death, anyone responsible for your medical bills, and any provider treating you. Under the old law, your adult daughter could not witness your directive. Under the current law, she can, as long as she is not the agent or the agent’s spouse.

Utah also now defines what “present” means. A witness is present if you are physically in the same room, or connected by real-time audio and video, or connected by audio alone if the witness personally knows you or can confirm your identity from your answers. Signing with a witness on a video call is expressly permitted.

Does a Utah Advance Health Care Directive Have to Be Notarized?

No. Utah has never required notarization for an advance health care directive, and the 2026 law did not add one. Section 75A-9-107 requires a record, your signature, and one qualifying adult witness. A notary is not on that list.

People still notarize these documents, and there is a reason to. A notarized signature is harder to attack later if a family member claims you were pressured or confused. It also smooths acceptance at out-of-state facilities where staff are used to stricter rules. Notarizing is a belt-and-suspenders choice, not a legal requirement, and it does not substitute for the witness. If you notarize but skip the witness, and you named an agent, the appointment is defective.

Is the Old Utah Advance Health Care Directive Form Still Valid?

A directive you signed before January 1, 2026 remains valid if it complied with the law in effect when you created it. That is the saving provision at Section 75A-9-128. The new chapter then applies to directives created before, on, or after that date, so your old document is read under the new rules going forward.

Signing an old-style form today is a different question. The saving provision does not reach documents created after the cutoff, so a form you sign now is judged directly against Section 75A-9-107. In most cases an old Utah form executed correctly still clears that bar, because the old witness restrictions were stricter than the new ones. The risk is not usually invalidity. The risk is that the old form asks you to make a single all-or-nothing end-of-life choice and never asks about the mental health admission and nursing home powers, so it leaves gaps your agent will hit at the worst moment.

Directives from other states are valid in Utah if they complied with the law of the state named in the document, or the state where you signed it, or with Utah’s chapter. Utah also cannot refuse a directive just because it is electronic.

Who Decides If You Have No Advance Health Care Directive in Utah?

Utah supplies a default surrogate, and the order is set by statute. If you have no agent and no guardian available, a health care professional works down this priority list to find someone reasonably available and not disqualified:

• An adult you identified for this purpose outside a power of attorney
• Your spouse, unless a divorce, annulment, separation, or dissolution proceeding is pending or decreed, you have agreed in writing to separate, or your spouse deserted you for more than a year
• Your adult child or your parent
• Your cohabitant
• Your adult sibling
• Your adult grandchild or grandparent
• An adult who has routinely helped you with supported decision making over the past six months
• An adult stepchild you actively parented and still have a relationship with
• An adult who has shown special care and concern for you and knows your values
• A physician designated under the statute, when no one else can be located

Notice that your adult child and your parent share one tier, and that adult siblings sit above grandchildren. When two people occupy the same tier and disagree, the statute has a process for the conflict, but the process runs on hospital time while treatment decisions wait. Naming an agent is how you skip all of it.

How Is a Directive Different From an Order for Life Sustaining Treatment?

An advance health care directive is your document. An Order for Life Sustaining Treatment, which Utah formerly called a POLST, is a medical order signed by a clinician. Paramedics follow the order. They do not read your directive at the scene.

The distinction matters if you have a serious illness and do not want CPR. A directive alone will not stop resuscitation in an emergency, because emergency medical services providers act on medical orders. You need a physician, physician assistant, or advanced practice registered nurse to complete the order form. Utah moved those provisions to Section 26B-2-801 in the same 2025 bill, out of the directive chapter entirely.

Most people who need both should have both. The directive covers the long tail of decisions across every setting. The order covers the ambulance ride.

How Do You Revoke or Change a Utah Advance Health Care Directive?

Revocation is deliberately easy. Under Section 75A-9-114, you can revoke an agent appointment, a surrogate designation, or an instruction by any act that clearly shows you intend to revoke it, including simply telling a health care professional out loud.

Two automatic rules are worth knowing. A later directive revokes an earlier one to the extent they conflict, so you do not have to hunt down every old copy, though you should. And naming your spouse as agent is automatically revoked if a divorce, annulment, separation, or dissolution petition is filed and not withdrawn, if a decree issues, if you agree in writing to separate, or if your spouse deserts you for more than a year. Utah does that for you unless your document says otherwise.

Changing the document is usually cleaner than amending it. Sign a new directive, date it, distribute it, and destroy the old copies. Getting a directive right is one piece of a larger plan, and it works best alongside a financial power of attorney. If you are deciding who to trust with either role, our guide on who to name as power of attorney in Utah walks through the same judgment call.

What Are the Most Common Mistakes on This Form?

The errors that cause real trouble are rarely dramatic. They are ordinary and repetitive.

• Using a form built on repealed law. It will misstate the witness rules and skip Part C entirely.
• Skipping the witness because you notarized it. The notary does not replace the witness when you name an agent.
• Leaving Part C blank without deciding. Blank means your agent cannot admit you for voluntary mental health treatment or authorize a long nursing home placement over your objection.
• Naming co-agents casually. Utah lets each co-agent act independently unless your document says otherwise, which means two people can give a hospital opposite instructions on the same afternoon.
• Never telling the agent. Part F exists to brief them. Hand it over and talk it through.
• Filing the only copy in a safe. Give copies to your agent, your alternate, and your primary care provider, and confirm it is in your medical record.
• Assuming a directive stops CPR. It does not. That takes a clinician-signed order.

One more that shows up constantly in Utah families: an adult child assumes that being the child is enough. It is not. Adult children share a priority tier with parents, so a surviving parent and an adult child have equal standing under the default surrogate list. If you want one specific person deciding, write the name down.

When Should You Involve a Utah Attorney?

Plenty of people can complete this form on their own, and doing it imperfectly beats not doing it at all. Legal help earns its cost in specific situations: blended families where the default surrogate order would produce the wrong person, an agent who lives out of state, a family member you want affirmatively disqualified, a serious mental illness where the mental health provisions need care, or a business you own that makes incapacity a continuity problem as well as a medical one.

A directive also should not sit alone. It belongs with a will or trust, a financial power of attorney, and beneficiary designations that agree with each other. Our Utah estate planning guide for people over 55 covers how those pieces fit, and if incapacity planning is your main concern, a Salt Lake elder law attorney handles this alongside long-term care and Medicaid questions. Families who skip this step often end up in Utah’s probate and guardianship process instead, which is slower, public, and considerably more expensive.

Written by Jeremy Eveland, an attorney practicing in Utah with a focus on business law, estate planning, and probate.

This article is general information about Utah law, not legal or medical advice, and it is current as of August 2026. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Statutes change, so confirm the current text before relying on any citation.