End-of-Life Planner: Everything They'll Need to Know

A free, printable end-of-life planner: eighteen sections that hold the answers your family will need, so nobody has to guess at the worst possible moment. Twenty-seven printed pages, at no cost.

Twenty-seven pages. Above: the cover, section 1, and the checklist your family reads first.

An end-of-life planner is a single document that records where your papers are, who should be told, what medical care you would accept, and how you want to be buried or cremated. It is not a will and it has no legal force. Its job is to save the people you love a hundred small, frightening questions in the first week after you die — and to point them to the legal documents that do carry weight.

Most of what a grieving family struggles with in that first week is not grief. It is administration. Where is the life insurance policy. Did she want to be buried. What is the code for his phone. Who has not been told yet. Those questions get asked either way. The only thing you can choose is whether you answer them now, calmly, in your own handwriting — or whether someone you love has to guess at them while making funeral arrangements.

What goes in an end-of-life planner

The planner has eighteen sections. You do not have to fill them in order, and you do not have to finish. A page filled in badly is worth infinitely more than a page left blank.

1. Where to find things. Where each document is kept — not what it says.
2. About me. The handful of details every form asks for: legal name, date and place of birth, Social Security number, your mother's full name including her maiden name.
3. The people to tell. In the order you want them told, and who makes each call.
4. Professional contacts. Doctor, attorney, executor, accountant, financial advisor, employer, funeral home.
5. Money and accounts. Which institutions, which kinds of account, last four digits only.
6. Insurance, retirement and benefits. Policies, plans, and the named beneficiary on each.
7. Regular payments. What to cancel — and, more importantly, what must keep being paid.
8. My digital life. What to close, what to save, what to leave alone.
9. The house. The shut-off valve, the alarm code, the boiler, the trash day.
10. Those who depend on me. Children, pets, anyone you care for.
11. My medical wishes. Written down here, then made official in the documents that bind.
12. My funeral. Burial or cremation, religious or not, who should speak, what you would hate.
13. Where I would like to rest. Including permission to say "whatever is easiest for you."
14. Things with a story. Not what is valuable — what has a story that disappears with you.
15. Things I want you to know. Three pages that are not practical at all.
16. A letter. To one named person.
17. For whoever is holding this book. A first-week checklist for the person doing the hardest work.
18. Anything else.

What the pages look like

Every page is a form with the questions already written on it. You fill in the blanks, or you skip them.

The six that matter most

If you only ever fill in six of the eighteen, make it these. They are the ones a family reaches for in the first seventy-two hours, and the ones that are almost impossible to reconstruct once you are not there to ask.

Section 1, where to find things. One page listing where each document physically is: the will, the deed, the insurance policies, the passport, the birth and marriage certificates. Not what they say — where they are. This is the section that most often means a family avoids a solicitor's bill entirely.

Section 2, about you. Legal name, date and place of birth, national identification number, and your mother's full name including her maiden name. Every registrar, bank and insurer asks for some subset of this, and adult children very often do not know their grandmother's maiden name.

Section 6, insurance and beneficiaries. Life insurance is the single most commonly lost asset after a death. Policies bought decades ago, held through a former employer, or attached to a mortgage go unclaimed because nobody knew they existed. One line naming the insurer is enough.

Section 7, regular payments. Which direct debits to cancel and — the half people forget — which must keep running. Home insurance on an empty house is the one that causes real damage when it lapses.

Section 11, medical wishes. Written here in plain language, then made official in the binding documents. Families make these decisions far more calmly when they have read a sentence in your handwriting rather than guessing at what you would have wanted.

Section 12, your funeral. Burial or cremation, religious or not, and one or two things you would hate. Funeral directors ask perhaps forty questions in the first meeting, and the family is answering them within a day of the death.

What actually happens when there is no planner

Nothing dramatic. That is the point. Nobody loses the house because a form was missing. What happens is smaller and more grinding, and it happens in almost every family.

Someone spends the second afternoon after the death going through a filing cabinet looking for a policy number, because the insurer will not talk to them without one. Someone else phones four banks to ask whether their father held an account, and is told each time that they cannot be given that information. A sibling argues, gently at first, about whether their mother would have wanted to be cremated, and neither of them actually knows. A subscription keeps taking money for fourteen months. A laptop stays locked and the photographs on it are simply gone.

None of that is a catastrophe. All of it is avoidable, and all of it lands on the people least able to absorb it, in the week they are least able to absorb it. A planner does not remove grief. It removes the paperwork that gets tangled up with grief and makes it worse.

Is an end-of-life planner the same as a will?

No. They do different jobs, and one cannot replace the other. A planner is a personal record with no legal force; a will, an advance directive and a power of attorney are legal instruments. The planner's real value is that it tells your family those instruments exist and where to find them.

“Advance directive” is the umbrella term in the US, and it covers both rows above; many states publish a single form combining them, and the name of the proxy document changes from state to state. A POLST or MOLST is different again — a portable medical order signed by a clinician, for people who are already seriously ill, and not available in every state. Requirements for all of these are set by state law in the US and vary between states and between countries. Have them drawn up by an attorney or notary. The planner is designed to sit alongside them, never to substitute for them.

The words for these documents change from country to country

This is the single biggest reason a generic checklist fails outside the country it was written in. If a Dutch family is told to look for a “living will”, they will look for something that does not exist under that name. Each edition of the planner uses the vocabulary and institutions of its own country.

United States. An advance directive is the umbrella; it usually contains a living will and a healthcare proxy (also called a healthcare or medical power of attorney, depending on the state). Money is handled separately by a durable power of attorney, assets may sit in a revocable living trust, and a HIPAA authorization is what lets a named person actually be told anything by a hospital. Death is registered by the funeral home; benefits run through Social Security and, for veterans, the VA.

Netherlands. A wilsverklaring records medical wishes; a levenstestament, drawn up by a notary, appoints someone to act for you on money and care while you are alive. Organ donation is recorded in the Donorregister, a will is registered in the Centraal Testamentenregister, and the death is reported to the gemeente.

Spain. Medical wishes go in a documento de instrucciones previas (in some regions voluntades anticipadas), registered by autonomous community. After a death the family requests a certificado de últimas voluntades to find out whether a will exists and with which notary. Many households hold a seguro de decesos, a funeral insurance policy that is unusual outside Spain and very easily forgotten.

Germany. A Patientenverfügung covers treatment; a Vorsorgevollmacht appoints someone to decide for you. Wills are registered in the Zentrales Testamentsregister, the death is registered at the Standesamt, which issues the Sterbeurkunde. German law also runs a strict clock: heirs have six weeks to renounce an inheritance, which matters enormously if there are debts.

France. Directives anticipées record treatment wishes and a personne de confiance is named to speak for you. Wills are traced through the Fichier Central des Dispositions de Dernières Volontés, and the acte de décès is issued by the mairie. In France an assurance-vie generally passes outside the estate to the named beneficiary, which surprises families every single time.

Each of these is summarised, not explained in full, and law changes. The planner names the documents so your family knows what to look for; an attorney or notary in your own country is who should draw them up.

Never write your passwords in it

The planner deliberately has no space for a password, a PIN or a full account number. It records only where your passwords are kept — a password manager, a sealed envelope, a safe.

That single rule is what makes a completed planner safe to leave in a drawer. A book full of practical answers is useful to your family; a book full of credentials is useful to anyone who finds it, including after a burglary or during an estate sale. Write "1Password, master password with my sister" and you have given your family everything they need without leaving your accounts open.

Where should you keep it, and who should know?

Tell one person where the planner is. That single sentence is the most important thing the planner contains — a perfectly completed book that nobody can find has done nothing.

Keep it somewhere your family can reach without a court order. A home safe or a labelled file drawer is better than a safe deposit box, because a bank box can be sealed on death and may need legal authority to open — which is exactly when the funeral instructions inside it are needed. If you use a safe deposit box for the originals, keep the planner itself at home and let it point to the box.

How to bring it up with a parent without it going badly

Most people reading this are not worried about their own paperwork. They are worried about a parent's, and they have already worked out that raising it will be awkward.

The move that works is not asking them to fill one in. It is filling in your own and mentioning it. “I did this thing for myself and it took an hour, do you want one” lands completely differently from “we need to talk about what happens when you die”. The first is something the family does. The second is something being done to them.

Three things make it easier. Ask for one section, not the book — section 1, where things are kept, is practical, unemotional, and the one they are most likely to say yes to. Do it at a table with a pen rather than over the phone. And do not push on the medical and funeral pages in the same conversation; those tend to come weeks later, often unprompted, once the practical pages are done.

If they say no, they say no, and that is allowed. Leave the printed copy somewhere visible. A surprising number of parents fill it in quietly a few months later and mention it in passing.

What to do when someone dies: the first week

Almost nothing on this list has to happen today. This is the checklist printed in section 17 of the planner, written for the person holding the book on the worst week of their life. Take them in order and stop when you need to stop.

1. Get the death pronounced and the death certificate signed. Nothing else can begin until a physician, hospice nurse or medical examiner has done this. In a hospital or hospice it happens automatically; at home, call hospice if they are involved, or 911 if they are not.
2. Call the funeral home or cremation provider. They handle far more of this list than most people expect, including filing the death certificate and ordering certified copies. Let them.
3. Order certified copies of the death certificate. Ask for more than you think you need — ten to twelve. Ordering more later is slower and costs more.
4. Find the will and notify the executor. Section 1 of the planner says where it is.
5. Call the estate attorney. They will tell you whether probate is needed at all — many estates with a trust or joint ownership do not go through it.
6. Notify Social Security. The funeral home usually reports the death, but confirm it was done, and ask about the lump-sum death payment and survivor benefits.
7. Notify the employer, pension plan and any union. Ask about final pay, unused leave, life insurance through work, and continuing health coverage for the family.
8. Notify banks and insurers. Bring a certified copy. Ask what may still be paid out of the account.
9. Cancel what is marked cancel. Section 7. Leave standing whatever is marked keep paying — homeowner's insurance on an empty house, above all.
10. Forward the mail.
11. Let someone cook for you. Genuinely. Put it on the list.

Not urgent, whatever anyone tells you: clearing the house, answering every message, deciding what to do with the clothes, being all right.

How many certified copies of the death certificate do you need?

Plan on ten to twelve certified copies. Each bank, insurer, pension plan, brokerage, title company and government agency will usually want its own certified copy and will not return it. Photocopies are refused for almost everything that matters.

Ordering more at the time of death is far cheaper and faster than going back to the vital records office months later, and the funeral home can usually order them for you as part of filing the certificate.

When should you fill one in?

Before you think you need to. The people who complete a planner calmly are the ones who do it years early; the people who never finish one are the ones who started after a diagnosis.

There are three moments when people usually reach for this. Sometimes it is a birthday with a round number, or a will finally being signed. Sometimes it is a parent reaching the age where an adult child starts quietly worrying. And sometimes it is a diagnosis, when the questions have become urgent. All three are fine. If you are in the third group, start with sections 1, 11 and 12 — where things are, medical wishes, funeral — and leave the rest.

Then come back once a year and cross things out. Accounts close, people move, you change your mind about music. Page 2 has a line for the date you last reviewed it.

A short glossary

The words that come up most often, in the order you are likely to meet them.

• Advance directive — the umbrella term for written instructions about your medical care if you cannot speak for yourself. In the US it usually combines a living will and a healthcare proxy.
• Living will — the half that says which treatments you would accept or refuse.
• Healthcare proxy — the half that names a person to decide for you. Called a healthcare or medical power of attorney in many states.
• Durable power of attorney — authority over your money and property while you are alive but unable to act. It ends at death.
• POLST or MOLST — a portable medical order signed by a clinician, for people who are already seriously ill. Not an advance directive, and not available in every state.
• Executor — the person named in a will to administer the estate. Called a personal representative in some places.
• Probate — the court process that confirms a will and gives the executor authority. Many estates with a trust or joint ownership never go through it.
• Revocable living trust — a structure holding assets so they pass without probate. It only covers what has actually been transferred into it.
• Beneficiary designation — the person named on a policy or retirement account. In several countries it overrides the will, which is why the planner asks you to check it.
• Certified copy — an official death certificate issued by the registrar. Photocopies are refused by almost every institution that matters.
• Estate — everything you owned and owed at death, taken together.
• Intestate — dying without a valid will, in which case the law decides who inherits.
• Digital legacy contact — a person you nominate inside a platform (Apple, Google, Meta) to access or close your account. What you set there generally overrides what your will says.

Two paper sizes

The planner prints on US Letter or A4 — choose the file that matches your printer. It is laid out for single-sided printing so that ink does not show through when you write on it, but double-sided works too and halves the paper.

The planner is a personal record, not legal advice, and law changes. Check anything that matters with an attorney or notary in your own country.

Why we made this, and why it is free

Still With Me makes guided journals for people who have already lost someone. Everything we publish sits on the far side of a death: the prompts, the chapters, the space to write about a person who is not coming back.

This is the only thing we make that sits on the near side of one. It came out of the same reading and the same conversations — hundreds of accounts of what the first week is actually like — and one thing came up in nearly all of them. The people who had been left a page of practical answers talked about that week very differently from the people who had not. Not less sadly. Just with less of the low, exhausting panic that comes from not knowing something you cannot now ask.

It is free because charging for it would defeat the point, and because it is not the product. If it turns out to be useful to you, and one day you or someone in your family needs the other kind of book, you will know where we are. That is the whole arrangement.

Written and maintained by Still With Me. It is a personal record, not legal or medical advice. Reviewed against the law of each of the five countries it is published in, and reviewed again each year — but law changes, and anything that matters should be checked with a professional where you live. Questions: hello@stillwithmejournal.com.

Frequently asked questions

Is the end-of-life planner really free?

Yes. Twenty-seven printable pages at no cost, with nothing to install and no payment step. The guided remembrance journals are what we sell; the planner is not behind a payment.

Is an end-of-life planner legally binding?

No. It is a personal record. It cannot decide who inherits what, and it cannot compel a doctor. Its purpose is to hold the practical answers and to point your family to the legal documents — the will, the advance directive, the power of attorney — that do bind.

What should you not put in an end-of-life planner?

Passwords, PINs, full account numbers, and card details. Record where those are kept instead. Anything you would not want a stranger to read should not be written in a book you intend to leave in a drawer.

Who should fill in an end-of-life planner?

Most people fill one in for themselves. Adult children often fill one in with an ageing parent — which is usually easier if you complete your own alongside theirs, so it reads as something the family does rather than something being asked of one person.

How long does it take to complete?

Sections 1, 11 and 12 take about an hour and cover most of what a family actually needs in the first week. The whole planner usually happens over several sittings across a few months.

Where should the planner be kept?

Somewhere at home that your family can reach without legal authority, such as a home safe or a labelled file drawer — and tell at least one person where it is. Avoid keeping the only copy in a safe deposit box, which may be sealed at death.

Can I print it double-sided?

Yes. It is designed for single-sided printing so you can write without ink showing through, but double-sided works and halves the paper. Choose the A4 or US Letter file to match your printer.

Do you send anything after I download it?

One email, in about three months, to ask how you got on and to offer a few prompts. Nothing before that, and one click unsubscribes.

Is an end-of-life planner the same as an advance directive?

No. An advance directive is a legal document about your medical care, and a doctor must follow it. The planner records your wishes in plain language and, more usefully, tells your family that the advance directive exists and where it is kept. Write both.

Does a beneficiary on a policy override a will?

In several countries, yes — which is why it is worth checking. A named beneficiary on a life insurance policy or retirement account is frequently paid out regardless of what the will says, and forms filled in decades ago often still name an ex-partner. The rules differ by country and by product; the planner asks you to write down who is named on each, so it can be checked.

What should you do first when a parent dies?

Have the death formally confirmed, then call the funeral home or cremation provider. Everything else — the will, the banks, the benefits, the subscriptions — can wait days or weeks, whatever the volume of paperwork suggests. The full order is in section 17.

How do I get a parent to fill one in?

Fill in your own first and mention it, rather than asking them to do it. Then ask for one section, not the book — section 1, where documents are kept, is practical and unemotional and is the one people say yes to. Leave the medical and funeral pages for a later conversation.

Is this a substitute for a lawyer?

No, and it is designed not to be. It has no legal force at all. What it does is make a lawyer's work cheaper and faster, because the information they would otherwise spend billable hours assembling is already on one page.

Can I fill it in on a computer instead of printing it?

The PDF is designed to be printed and written on by hand, which is also what makes it usable when a screen is locked and nobody knows the passcode. If you would rather type, most PDF readers let you add text boxes — but keep a printed copy somewhere your family can physically find.

Still With Me makes guided remembrance journals — eighty gentle prompts across nine chapters, in editions shaped around one specific loss. If you are here because someone has already died, the journals are grouped by relationship, and there are 25 free grief journal prompts to start with. If you are looking for support rather than paperwork, we keep a list of where to find help.