Making, amending, revoking, and refusing to make anatomical gifts by individual · Montana
Montana: how to refuse organ donation
If you came here to get off the registry
Is removing the donor designation enough in Montana?
Taking your name off the organ donor registry is a revocation. So is removing the designation from your driver’s license. Under Mont. Code Ann. § 72-17-201(16), Montana law treats a revocation and a refusal as two different things, and only the refusal settles it.
A revocation withdraws the gift you made. It does not stop anyone else from making the gift for you. Only a refusal does that, and Mont. Code Ann. § 72-17-201(11), (14) is the section that says so. It has to be signed.
Both provisions are quoted in full below, from Montana’s own code.
What Montana asks
What you need to make a refusal in Montana
- Act
- 2006 revision, renumbered by the state
- Enforcement
- An unrevoked refusal bars all other persons from making the gift.
- Signing it yourself
- No witnesses required by the statute.
- If someone signs at your direction
- Two adults. At least one of the two must be a disinterested witness; the other may be anyone, including a family member.
- Notary
- Not required.
- Montana law
- Mont. Code Ann. § 72-17-201(11), (14), (16)
- Statute read
- 2026-09-02
Making, amending, revoking, and refusing to make anatomical gifts by individual · Making, amending, revoking, and refusing to make anatomical gifts by individual
The statute itself
Quoted from Montana’s enacted code, in full and unedited.
How a refusal is made (11)
(a) An individual may refuse to make an anatomical gift of the individual's body or part by: (i) a writing signed in the same manner as a document of gift; (ii) a statement attached to or imprinted on a donor's driver's license or identification card; (iii) the individual's will, whether or not the will is admitted to probate or invalidated after the individual's death; or (iv) any other writing used to identify the individual as refusing to make an anatomical gift. (b) During a terminal illness or injury, the refusal may be an oral statement or other form of communication addressed to at least two adults, at least one of whom is a disinterested witness.
Mont. Code Ann. § 72-17-201(11), (14)
How it must be witnessed
A donor or other person authorized to make an anatomical gift under subsection (1) may make a gift by a donor card or other record signed by the donor or other person making the gift ... If the donor or other person is physically unable to sign the record, the record may be signed by another individual at the direction of the donor or the other person and must: (a) be witnessed by at least two adults, at least one of whom is a disinterested witness, who have signed at the request of the donor or other person; and (b) state that it has been signed and witnessed as provided in subsection (3)(a).
Mont. Code Ann. § 72-17-201(3) · Document-of-gift execution, reached by § 72-17-201(11)(a)(i)
What an unrevoked refusal does (14)
Except as otherwise provided in subsection (18), in the absence of an express, contrary indication by the individual set forth in the refusal, an individual's unrevoked refusal to make an anatomical gift of the individual's body or a part bars all other persons from making an anatomical gift of the individual's body or a part.
Mont. Code Ann. § 72-17-201(11), (14)
A revocation is not a refusal (16)
In the absence of contrary indications by the donor, a donor's revocation or amendment of an anatomical gift of the donor's body or part is not a refusal to make another anatomical gift and does not bar another person specified in 72-17-214 or this section from making an anatomical gift of the donor's body or part. If the donor intends a revocation to be a refusal to make an anatomical gift, the donor shall make the refusal pursuant to subsection (11).
Mont. Code Ann. § 72-17-201(16)