Essential Documents
Getting your legal, medical, and financial documents in order helps protect your wishes and makes difficult decisions easier for the people you trust. Start with the essentials, then add documents that fit your circumstances.
Start with Essential Documents
These four documents form the foundation of most end-of-life plans. While individual situations vary, nearly everyone should understand these documents and consider completing them.
Last Will & Testament
A will explains how you want your property distributed after your death and names the person responsible for carrying out your wishes.
Why It Matters
Without a valid will, state law generally determines who inherits your property.
Durable Financial Power of Attorney
This document authorizes someone you trust to manage financial and legal matters if illness or injury prevents you from doing so yourself.
Why It Matters
It lets someone you trust handle financial matters when you cannot, within the authority granted by the document.
Advance Directive
An Advance Directive records your healthcare wishes and may appoint someone to make medical decisions if you cannot speak for yourself.
Why It Matters
It gives your healthcare team and loved ones clear guidance during difficult situations.
Final Disposition
This document identifies who has authority to carry out your wishes regarding burial, cremation, or other wishes, where permitted by law.
Why It Matters
It helps clarify who may make decisions about your remains and carry out your funeral, burial, or cremation wishes, subject to state law.
State Laws are Different
The names, requirements, and legal effect of these documents vary by state. Whenever possible, use forms approved for your state and seek legal advice if your situation is unusually complex.
Other Documents to Consider
Not everyone needs these documents, but many people benefit from including one or more of them as part of a complete estate plan.
Revocable Living Trust
A Revocable Living Trust allows you to place selected assets into a trust that you control during your lifetime. It names someone to manage or distribute those assets if you become incapacitated or after your death.
Living trusts can help avoid probate for some assets and may be especially useful for people with property in multiple states, substantial assets, or privacy concerns.
Beneficiary Designations
Certain assets—including retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and many financial accounts—pass directly to the people named as beneficiaries instead of through your will.
Review these designations regularly, especially after marriage, divorce, births, deaths, or other major life events.
Letter of Instruction
A Letter of Instruction is not generally a legal document, but it can be one of the most helpful documents your family receives.
Include key contacts, pet-care instructions, funeral preferences, and the locations of important records. Explain how an authorized person can access securely stored account information; avoid putting passwords in a general instruction sheet..
Store & Share Your Documents
Even the best documents cannot help if no one knows they exist or where to find them.
Store originals in a secure location, but make sure the people you’ve chosen to act on your behalf know where they are. Provide copies when appropriate, and review your documents whenever your health, family, or financial situation changes.
Templates & Resources
These organizations provide high-quality forms, guidance, and educational materials to help you begin creating or updating your essential documents.
Nolo Final Arrangements Kit
A comprehensive workbook that helps organize funeral wishes, personal information, and important end-of-life decisions in one place.
Death With Dignity
Provides free Advance Directive forms and educational materials designed to help you communicate your healthcare wishes.
Five Wishes
A widely used Advance Directive that combines medical decisions with personal, emotional, and spiritual preferences in one document.
Documents Are Only One Part of a Complete Plan
Organizing your paperwork is an important step, but a complete plan also includes conversations, financial preparation, and documenting your personal wishes.