Free Printable End-of-Life Planner: What to Include and Where to Start

Searching for a free printable end-of-life planner is a sign that you are doing something most families avoid. You have recognized that this planning needs to happen, and you want a practical way to start. That instinct is exactly right.

This article explains what a complete end-of-life planner should contain, which sections you can assemble for free, and where a more structured workbook pays for itself in time saved and conflict prevented.

What Should an End-of-Life Planner Actually Include?

Before you print anything, it helps to understand what "end-of-life planning" actually covers. Many people assume it is just a will. In reality, a complete planner spans five distinct areas, each of which serves a different purpose.

1. Legal Documents Inventory

A planner should include a section for tracking which legal documents exist, who has them, and where originals are stored. The core documents are:

• Last will and testament
• Durable power of attorney (financial)
• Healthcare proxy / medical power of attorney
• Living will / advance directive
• POLST or MOLST (physician orders for life-sustaining treatment)
• Revocable living trust (if applicable)

This is not the documents themselves — it is a locator that tells family members where to find them when needed.

2. Financial Overview

A financial summary page that lists:

• Banks and account types (checking, savings, investment accounts)
• Retirement accounts and beneficiaries
• Life insurance policies (insurer, policy number, beneficiary, death benefit amount)
• Real estate owned (address, mortgage status, title ownership)
• Outstanding debts
• Social Security and pension information
• Accountant and financial advisor contacts

This section is often what survivors spend weeks piecing together after a death. Having it pre-assembled is one of the most practical gifts a person can leave their family.

3. Personal Wishes and Preferences

This is where most planners are weakest — and where the conversations are hardest. A good planner prompts the person completing it to record:

• Medical care preferences (level of intervention, CPR preferences, ventilator, feeding tube)
• Hospice preferences (home, facility, who should be present)
• Organ donation decision
• Funeral preferences (burial or cremation, service type, location)
• What to do with the body immediately after death (who to call, what NOT to do)
• Memorial service preferences (readings, music, who should speak, what should be avoided)

4. Digital Assets and Accounts

A modern planner must address the digital dimension:

• Email accounts and access method
• Social media accounts and legacy contact settings
• Password manager access
• Cryptocurrency or digital assets
• Online subscriptions to cancel
• Websites, domains, or digital businesses

5. Practical After-Death Logistics

The immediate tasks after someone dies are overwhelming without a roadmap:

• Where to find the death certificate (state vital records office)
• Which organizations to notify (Social Security, pension, employer, insurance)
• What paperwork is required to close each type of account
• Who the executor is and what steps they take to open probate
• What bills continue automatically and need to be canceled

Free Resources You Can Print Right Now

Several reputable organizations offer free printable materials that cover portions of this planning.

CaringInfo (caringinfo.org) — part of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization — offers free state-specific advance directive forms. These are the legal documents, not a planner, but they are an essential starting point.

Five Wishes (fivewishes.org) — a low-cost advance directive that is legally valid in 42 states and written in plain language. It covers medical preferences, personal preferences, and even spiritual wishes. At $5 for a printed copy, it is as close to free as you will find for a legally meaningful document.

AARP's "Prepare to Care" guide — a free downloadable guide for family caregivers that includes some planning worksheets.

Your state's department of health often has free advance directive forms, POLST forms, and occasionally broader planning resources. Search "[your state] advance directive form PDF" or "[your state] POLST form."

These resources are valuable, and you should use them. Their limitation is coverage: most free options address the legal documents well but provide little support for the financial overview, the personal wishes conversations, the digital assets section, or the practical post-death logistics.

What Free Options Typically Miss

If you have searched for free printable end-of-life planners, you may have found generic checklists with boxes to check. What these rarely provide:

Conversation guides. Most people don't struggle to fill out a form — they struggle to have the conversation that leads to knowing what to put on the form. A parent who has never talked about death is not going to sit down cheerfully and complete a planner. The conversations have to come first, and most free resources don't help with them.

Jurisdiction-specific guidance. Legal documents vary by state, and sometimes by country. A generic printout may not meet your state's witnessing or notarization requirements. Blanks can be worse than no document at all if they give you false confidence that you are covered.

Integration across sections. The financial overview, legal documents, and personal wishes need to be cross-referenced and internally consistent. If the will names one executor and the financial POA names a different person with different authority, you have created a conflict. A piecemeal approach using different free templates is hard to coordinate.

A place for the hard stuff. The most important pages in any end-of-life planner are the ones where the person documents their actual wishes about treatment, about dying, about what matters to them. These require prompts that invite thoughtful reflection, not just blank lines.

The Case for a Paid Workbook

A well-designed end-of-life planning workbook costs roughly the same as a dinner out. What it provides:

• Guided prompts that lead the user through each section without overwhelm
• Conversation scripts for adult children who need help opening these discussions with a parent
• State-specific legal document overviews and guidance on when to hire a lawyer
• A complete document locator and financial summary in one place
• Digital asset tracking worksheets
• Post-death logistics checklists for the executor and surviving family

The time saved versus piecing together free resources is significant. The risk mitigation — avoiding the scenarios where a document is missing, outdated, or stored where no one can find it — is substantial.

Where to Start Today

Regardless of whether you use free resources or a paid workbook, the most important step is the conversation. A plan that lives in your parent's head and has never been shared with anyone is not a plan.

Start here:

1. Ask your parent if they have a will and where it is stored.
2. Ask who has authority to make medical decisions for them if they cannot make them.
3. Ask if they have documented their wishes about end-of-life medical care.
4. Ask what they would want for their funeral.

Four questions. The answers will tell you how much work remains.

If you want a structured way to work through every component of this planning — from opening the conversation to filing the final document — the End-of-Life Planning Workbook covers it all in one place, with worksheets your parent can complete and conversation guides you can use to get the discussion started.

Get the End-of-Life Planning Workbook