What is a Living Will?
A Living Will sometimes gets confused with a Last Will which says, who gets what after you've passed. A Living Will applies while you're still alive. So, if you are in a situation where you are terminally and irreversibly ill or injured. You're unable to communicate, and you're on life support, your Living Will clarifies at what time, after what number of days, would you want to be taken off life support.
So, that could be three days, or five days, or seven days, it's totally up to you. But the idea is that you've thought about it ahead of time. You've put it in writing so that way if your family does find that they're in that situation with you and their wanting to know what would you do, then you clarified in your Living Will, what you would do.
That after that number of days, if there's no improvement seen they'll take you off life support. And the nice thing about that is family members differ on what they think that person would want and so somebody might say three days whereas somebody else might say seven days and you've got family conflict.
Whereas, if you just decide ahead of time that five days is right for you or whatever you decide the idea is that you have taken the time to think through it, put it in writing and then your family knows that's exactly what you would want.