Hospital Visitation Rights

While federal rules are changing to make it easier for LGBT partners to visit one another in the hospital, it remains vitally important that the proper documents be in place to establish visitation rights for the partner of another who is hospitalized. In Pennsylvania, it is possible to identify individuals, including partners, who the hospital must give visitation access. These documents are legally enforceable should a hospital have discriminatory practices.

There are number of documents that can be drafted to ensure that partners can visit each other should one of them be hospitalized. Some of these include Powers of Attorney, Living Wills, and Designation of Agents with visitation rights. Beyond granting your partners the right to visit each other in the hospital, documents such these can contain HIPAA releases, which allow a partner the ability to access and review the medical records of the other. Without the proper language, however, such releases may fail, potentially making it impossible for a partner to make informed decisions on the other's behalf.

For more information on this and other topics, you can visit our firm's website.

Welcome!

While Estate Planning is important for everyone, LGBT couples and individuals should take special care in creating and implementing a plan to ensure that their wishes are followed. Our firm's combined years of experience will help same-sex partners and LGBT individuals understand what is needed to create an effective estate plan.

Our goal for this blog is to establish a forum where members of the Philadelphia and surrounding communities can seek information about the world of Estates & Trusts and how it affects LGBT individuals. We understand that there is a dearth of material available regarding the Estate planning issues that most affect gay and lesbian persons, and hope that the information you find on this website will help to fill that void.