It is well known that the Civil Code of Québec provides that no one may be made to undergo care except with his free and enlightened consent. If the person concerned is incapable of giving his consent to care, it will be necessary to rely on the wishes that he has recorded in advance medical directives (AMD) or, in the absence of such, on a person authorized by law to do so in his place, complying, as far as possible, with any wishes expressed by the person concerned. This paper presents the results of an empirical study aimed at exploring the knowledge, motivations, needs and desires of those who write advance directives to care in anticipation of their incapacity to consent to care, whether in AMD or in a protection mandate. The objective of this paper is to better understand the steps and considerations that arise when it comes to care planning in anticipation of one’s incapacity to consent to those care. After recalling the applicable norms regarding consent to medical care and the rules governing the expression of AMD, this paper describes the advantages and disadvantages of such directives as identified in the scientific literature. In order to grasp these theoretical considerations in concrete terms and to better understand the motivations behind the decision to record or not to record advance directives to care, it presents the results of semi-directed interviews conducted with 20 people over the age of 60.