Intersection of Law and Policy

From July, 2010 Of Counsel Vol. 6, No. 3

Nothing can ever give Janice Langbehn and her three children back the time they lost with Lisa Pond, Langbehn's beloved partner and the children's other mother. They were denied access to Lisa while she lay dying in a Miami hospital. Even the court system didn’t provide redress when Lambda Legal filed suit against the hospital. Lambda Legal has worked tirelessly alongside Janice to raise awareness and demand policy changes at that hospital so that health care powers of attorney and visitation directives will be honored in the future.

Word about the outcome of our suit and Janice’s experience reached President Obama, who called her on April 15 to apologize. He also let her know that he sent a memo to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), directing them to come up with requirements for hospitals receiving Medicaid or Medicare funds to respect the rights of patients to choose their own visitors, including same-sex partners. Hospitals must also have policies that respect health care decision-making directives.

Lambda Legal will analyze the proposed regulations and provide input to HHS to ensure that what happened to Lisa and her family won't happen to any other family. We don’t know what form the final regulations will take. But it is clear from the President’s language that LGBT people will need to have their basic life planning documents in place in order to have their wishes respected.

Lambda Legal recommends that all people have in place these life planning documents:

• a health care directive (including a HIPAA release, designation of medical decision-maker(s), and visitation preferences)
• a financial power of attorney
• a living will
• a funeral directive/disposition of remains document (including designation of funeral decision-making authority)
• a will

In some states, other documents may also be important to consider, such as a Designation of Pre-Need Guardian (which allows people to select the person who will be in charge of their long-term decision-making should they need it) for residents of Florida and some other states.

Now is the time to stress to clients how critically important planning is, particularly for LGBT people, and how necessary it is to always carry emergency documents when traveling. Lambda Legal has published a Life and Financial Planning Toolkit, called "Take the Power!" as a helpful starting place for talking with your clients about these issues.