Do General Health Care Proxies Allow Voluntary Commitment?
This case raises the issue of whether a general health care power of attorney authorizing proxy decision making includes the right to voluntarily commit the ward. It has a good discussion of the policy issues and useful citation to the law in other states. In 1998, Helen Bolduc, then seventy-four years old, executed a prototypical health care proxy, in which she authorized her daughter, as her agent, to make health care decisions on her behalf in the event she was unable to consent to them. Bolduc’s health care proxy provided, in relevant part: “My Health Care Agent is granted full power and authority to consent to any and all medical treatment which I may need in the event that I am unable to consent to such treatment on my own including without limitation authority to consent for medical care, hospitalization, nursing home admission, or whatever else may in my Health Care Agent’s sole judgment be in my best interest . . . . I further state to all the world that there are no limitatio
