Every year, nearly 2 million American families are prescribed and instructed to use comfort kits to ease suffering and distress in their dying loved ones. These comfort kits typically contain controlled substances like sublingual morphine, benzodiazepines, and other medications.

But even though caregivers are expected to medicate their loved ones using these comfort kits, there are no legal protections that shield them from criminal allegations once their loved one passes away.

What is Marsha's Law?

Marsha’s Law would require home hospice providers to create robust documentation that includes a list of what medications are part of the hospice patient's prescribed comfort kit and who is legally authorized to administer these medications to the patient receiving hospice care.

The hospice provider would then create a signed and witnessed document showing that family or other caregivers have been trained and authorized by qualified hospice staff to administer the medications in the comfort kit.

Hospice providers would be required to maintain a copy of this document and provide it to law enforcement or the coroner in the event of an investigation. This would give legal clarity on who is authorized to administer medications to hospice patients.

Why is Marsha's Law important?

Depending on the hospice company, there is often little to no documentation showing that family members are authorized to give their loved ones the medications contained in the comfort kit. As a result, law enforcement, medical examiners, and district attorneys who are unfamiliar with hospice practices may think that family members who give their loved one these medications, many of which are controlled substances, are committing a crime.

For the 1.7 million American families who rely on home hospice care every year, such a gap is simply too risky to leave open. This is especially true considering how often relationships and understanding of roles, rights, and responsibilities become confused or strained as a patient nears death.

Marsha's Law would mandate that every family prescribed a comfort kit receives documentation that it is for the family to use in accordance with their training.

This document could be kept with the comfort kit so that, in the event of an investigation, law enforcement would see that the family and/or other caregivers had been authorized by the hospice provider to administer these medications to the patient.

What is the story behind Marsha's Law?

In July 2023, Rachel Waters got the call every child dreads. Her mom, Marsha Foster, who had Alzheimer's and end-stage cancer, had been found non-responsive with oxygen levels in the 70s.
Hospice staff said that she was “actively dying” and had "hours to days" to live.

Rachel and her husband traveled from NYC to Georgia as soon as they could and set up a bed in the room at the assisted living facility that Marsha had moved into several months after going on home hospice. After three days with no responsiveness to anything but a pained face as she was turned and no food or fluids, Rachel’s mom began to desperately gasp for air.

Despite Rachel’s repeated requests for morphine to be prescribed to the facility to help ease her mom’s pain and respiratory distress, the hospice company never prescribed a comfort kit (which includes morphine) to the assisted living facility. 

Though facility employees cannot administer any medications not prescribed to them, residents are permitted by law to self-administer their own medications. Since Rachel’s mom was unable to do so and Rachel was her medical and legal proxy, Rachel was the only person legally permitted (and trained) to use the comfort kit that had been prescribed to her mom upon entry to hospice.

After Rachel’s husband picked up the comfort kit from the home just case it would be needed, Rachel and her husband informed the residential staff that they had the comfort care kit that had been prescribed when Marsha went into hospice. Then, Rachel and her husband called hospice as they’d been trained to do. The hospice nurse then gave the instructions for use via phone.

Sadly, the small amount of morphine under Marsha’s tongue did nothing to alleviate her distress. She died, gasping for air until her very last breath.

What followed was unimaginable.

While Rachel and her husband reeled from grief, staff reported her death as suspicious. Despite this, Rachel and her husband felt certain this misunderstanding would soon be cleared up. They assumed this because, not only were there many witnesses to Marsha’s rapidly declining condition, but also because they had used her valid comfort kit prescription in accordance with their training. Moreover, Marsha’s "active dying" status prior to their arrival was well documented.

They were wrong.

In February of 2025, Rachel was charged with two counts of murder in the state of Georgia: Felony murder and malice murder, both of which carry the possibility of the death penalty.

Luckily, Rachel had collected ample evidence that she had acted in good faith. Much of this evidence didn't seem to have been available to the medical examiner or district attorney during the course of the criminal investigation. This included eyewitness testimonies to her death and the days leading up to it, videos and photos of Marsha’s condition, phone and text records, as well as hospice records that showed she had been declared "actively dying" and that Rachel was called down from NYC to be with her in her final moments.

Critically, Rachel was also able to provide evidence of her mom’s valid morphine prescription and witnesses to her authorization to administer it, as the charges seemed to hinge on the belief that family members are not permitted to give comfort medications to their dying loved ones in hospice.

With this new information, the medical examiner updated Marsha’s cause of death and it was no longer ruled a homicide. The DA then dropped all charges in August 2025 and Rachel was released from bond.

Though she was cleared, the experience shattered Rachel’s life. She lost her career, her life savings (and her husband's savings, too), her family, and her reputation while grieving her mom's death and fighting for her own life.

If she had not collected the evidence she did, if she didn’t have the life savings to cover legal fees and bond, if she didn’t have direct witnesses, or if she was not made aware of her indictment which enabled her to turn herself in, Rachel may not be free today.

Rachel emerged from the ordeal certain that, if and when another person found themselves wrongly accused of misusing their loved one’s prescribed comfort medications, they would not be nearly as lucky as she.

Rachel and her family’s horrific experience highlights why we must pass Marsha’s Law, so that what happened to her and her mom NEVER happens to another family ever again.