The Things Your Family Should Know Before You Die

Most people assume their family knows more than they actually do. Not because no one cares - because no one ever sat down and went through it all, in one place, on purpose.

This guide is organized into thirteen parts: Me, My People, My Health, My Money, My Documents, My Digital Life, My Things, My Pets, My Final Wishes, My Faith, My Funeral, My Story, and My Family. Each one covers what actually matters, why it matters, and where to go deeper if you want the full guide on a specific piece of it. Every section ends with a direct path into your Final Day Plan, so reading this can turn straight into actually doing it.

You don’t need to finish this in one sitting. Almost no one does.

Part 1: Me

Start with the basics most families assume they already have straight, and often don’t: your full legal name, any name you’ve gone by, your date and place of birth, and the broad shape of your own life story - where you grew up, where you’ve lived, what’s shaped you. This sounds obvious until a family is filling out paperwork under pressure and realizes they’re not entirely sure of a detail they always assumed they knew.

This section is also where your own voice belongs - not just facts, but who you actually are. What you care about. What you’re proud of. What you’d want someone meeting you for the first time, through this document, to understand.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “About You”

Part 2: My People

Your family needs two different kinds of information here, and most plans only cover one. First: who’s who - your immediate family, extended relationships that matter, and anyone your family should know about even if they’ve never met them. Second: roles - who should be your healthcare proxy, who should serve as executor, who has power of attorney, and who your family should call first when something happens.

It’s also worth naming anyone you’d want your family to reconnect with, or any relationship history worth explaining honestly rather than leaving your family to guess at later.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “Your People”

Part 3: My Health

This is where your voice matters most, precisely because it’s the one area where you might not be able to speak for yourself when it counts. Document your wishes around medical decisions, life support, and end-of-life care directly - not just who should decide, but what you’d actually want them to decide. See our guide on advance directives, living wills, and healthcare proxies for how to make this legally binding, not just a conversation you had once.

Beyond the big decisions, your family also needs the practical layer: your doctors, your medications, your allergies, and any conditions that would matter to know about quickly in an emergency.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “Medical Decisions”

Part 4: My Money

Most families discover a parent’s or spouse’s full financial picture only after death, piece by piece, often with real gaps. Your family needs to know what accounts exist, at which banks, what insurance policies you hold, what debts exist, and where the actual documentation lives - not just that these things exist somewhere.

See our guide on typical end-of-life costs for what your family may need to plan for financially, and handling debts after a death for how debt is actually handled so your family isn’t guessing about what they are or aren’t responsible for.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “Important Documents”

Part 5: My Documents

Your will, your power of attorney, property deeds, your birth certificate, your marriage certificate, any trust documents - your family doesn’t just need these documents to exist. They need to know where they physically are. See our guide on what documents to organize for the specific list most families are missing pieces of, and getting your affairs in order for a fuller walkthrough of this entire process.

If you haven’t written a will yet, this is worth prioritizing above almost everything else in this guide - without one, state law decides who inherits, not you.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “Important Documents”

Part 6: My Digital Life

Your phone, your passwords, your photos, your social media accounts, your email - all of it either has a plan, or it becomes a genuine, sometimes years-long problem for your family. See our guide on digital legacy planning for how to actually prepare this, and should you leave your passwords to someone for thinking through the real tradeoffs of that specific, common question.

This is also where your own preferences belong: do you want your accounts memorialized, deleted, or left to a family member to decide? Very few people document this, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that creates avoidable family conflict later.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “Important Documents”

Part 7: My Things

The house, the car, the jewelry, the specific objects that matter - most of this ends up distributed through a mix of assumption, memory, and occasionally real disagreement, unless you’ve actually said something in advance. See our guide on who gets your wedding ring and who gets mom’s jewelry for how families typically navigate this, and why it’s worth naming specific wishes for specific meaningful items rather than leaving everything as one general “personal property” category.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Add this under “Anything Else”

Part 8: My Pets

Who takes your dog. Who takes your cat. This is one of the most commonly overlooked parts of any plan, and one of the most stressful gaps for a family to discover during an already difficult time. See our guide on what happens to your pet if you die for how to actually document a caregiver in advance, rather than leaving your family to sort it out informally.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Add this under “Anything Else”

Part 9: My Final Wishes

Burial or cremation. A specific cemetery, or ashes scattered somewhere meaningful. This is often the first thing people think a Final Day Plan is for - and it’s genuinely important, but it’s just one part of a much bigger picture. See our guide on burial vs. cremation and what to do with cremated remains for working through these specific choices.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “Burial or Cremation”

Part 10: My Faith

Whatever your beliefs, or lack of them, your family shouldn’t have to guess whether you’d want a religious service, and which tradition’s specific practices matter to you. See our guide on Final Day Plan by Faith for tradition-specific guidance across Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and secular approaches to end-of-life planning.

If your beliefs have changed over your life, or differ from your family’s, saying so directly now prevents a difficult, avoidable disagreement for them later.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “Type of Service”

Part 11: My Funeral

Beyond burial or cremation, the actual shape of the service - the music, who you’d want to speak, whether it’s a formal funeral or a celebration of life, the general atmosphere you’d want in the room. See our guide on funeral, memorial, or celebration of life for the range of formats available, and what do you wear to a funeral if you want to think through the guest experience too.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “Personal Touches”

Part 12: My Story

The photographs, the recipes, the memories, the stories only you can tell. This is the part of a Final Day Plan that turns it from paperwork into something your family will actually treasure. See our guide on 100 questions to tell your life story and write your life story in 10 chapters for how to actually capture this, not just intend to someday.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “A Message”

Part 13: My Family

Finally: what do you actually want to say to the people you love? Not logistics - the thing you’d want them to hear directly from you, in your own words, after you’re gone. See our guide on ethical wills and legacy letters for one structured way to write this, and the letter your child opens after you die for a more specific version of the same idea.

Add this to My Final Day Plan → Start with “A Message”

Do I need to complete all 13 parts before this is useful to my family?

No - even a partially completed plan is far more valuable to your family than none at all. Completing even a few of these sections, especially Parts 2, 3, and 5 (your people, your health wishes, and where your documents are), covers the areas families most urgently need in the first hours and days after a death.

Is this different from the shorter “50 Things” checklist?

Yes, deliberately - see our guide on the 50 things your family should know if you want a faster, more scannable checklist version covering similar ground. This guide is meant to be the fuller version: more explanation, more context for why each part matters, and a direct path from every section into actually documenting it.

What if some of this doesn’t apply to me?

Skip it. Not every section applies to every life - if you don’t have pets, or your faith section is simply “I don’t have specific wishes here,” that’s a complete and legitimate answer. The point isn’t to force relevance where none exists; it’s to make sure nothing that does matter gets missed by accident.

How long should this actually take?

However long it takes, spread across as many sessions as you need. Most people don’t complete something like this in one sitting, and treating it as an ongoing, occasionally-revisited project - updated as life changes - tends to work better than trying to finish it all at once.

This is general educational information, not legal, medical, or financial advice - an attorney, financial advisor, or physician can address the specifics of your particular situation.