North Carolina healthcare directive requirements.

What governs a North Carolina directive

North Carolina's healthcare-directive statute is at N.C. Gen. Stat. §32A-15 et seq.; this instrument meets the §32A-16(3) definition and is not the optional statutory form set out at §32A-25.1. The official form is the Health Care Power of Attorney. Last verified 2026-04. Your directive is valid the moment it's signed under your state's witness and notary rules above; it only takes effect if your physician determines you can't make or communicate decisions yourself.

Living will companion in North Carolina

In this state, a separate living will document records your end-of-life treatment preferences.

File your directive with North Carolina

North Carolina operates the North Carolina Advance Health Care Directive Registry (Secretary of State), a database hospitals can search when you arrive unable to speak. Operated by the NC Secretary of State under N.C. Gen. Stat. §130A-465 (Article 21 of Chapter 130A, Advance Health Care Directive Registry; §§130A-465 through 130A-471). Registrants pay a ten dollar ($10.00) filing fee per document filed, and no fee to file a revocation (§130A-470(a)). The Secretary assigns each filed document a unique file number and password and returns the original document with a wallet-size card carrying that file number and password (§130A-468(a) and (b)), which is what lets a clinician retrieve the directive. Filing is voluntary and failure to register does not affect a document's validity (§130A-467). Only the person who executed a document may submit it, and any document filed must be notarized whether or not notarization is required for its validity, except a declaration of an anatomical gift (§130A-466(b) and (c)). The four registrable document types are the Article 3 health care power of attorney, the declaration of a desire for a natural death (living will), an advance instruction for mental health treatment, and a declaration of an anatomical gift (§130A-466(a)).

North Carolina Advance Health Care Directive Registry (Secretary of State) →

Witness rules for your North Carolina directive

Each of us declares under penalty of perjury that we are at least eighteen years of age and that we are NOT (i) related to the principal or the principal's spouse within the third degree by blood, marriage, or adoption, (ii) a person who knows or has a reasonable expectation of being entitled to any portion of the principal's estate under any existing will or codicil of the principal or under the Intestate Succession Act as it then provides, (iii) the principal's attending physician or mental-health-treatment provider, (iv) a licensed health-care provider who is a paid employee of the principal's attending physician or mental-health-treatment provider, a paid employee of a health facility in which the principal is a patient, or a paid employee of a nursing home or adult care home in which the principal resides, or (v) a person with a claim against any portion of the principal's estate at the time of execution of this health care power of attorney. N.C. Gen. Stat. §32A-16(6) imposes these qualified-witness requirements; both witnesses must independently satisfy each.