§ 137.004.Health Care Provider to Act in Accordance with Declaration for Mental Health Treatment

Two sentences allocating decision-making between the person and the document.

A physician or other health care provider shall act in accordance with the declaration when the principal has been found to be incapacitated.

"Has been found" carries the whole protection. The finding is a court’s, made in a guardianship proceeding or a medication hearing, so the declaration is not activated by a clinical judgment.

Until that finding, the document sits dormant. It exists, it is effective on execution, and it directs nothing.

A physician or other provider shall continue to seek and act in accordance with the principal’s informed consent to all mental health treatment decisions if the principal is capable of providing informed consent.

This is the more important of the two sentences in daily practice. A person with a declaration on file remains the decision-maker, and having executed one is not evidence that they cannot decide now.

The duty is stated actively: providers must seek consent, not wait for the patient to raise it.

"All mental health treatment decisions" leaves no residue for the document to govern while capacity lasts, so a provider cannot rely on a declaration for one decision while asking the patient about another.

The section also implies that capacity can return. A person found incapacitated who recovers resumes deciding, and the declaration recedes — which matches the expiry rule, where the extension lasts only while the incapacity does.