End-of-Life Planner

What this guide covers

This guide is written as a practical reference for New Zealand families organizing private records before they become urgent. It focuses on the details that make a plan understandable to someone who may need to act quickly and carefully.

• A useful planner connects wishes, documents, accounts, and contacts.
• Final wishes should be written clearly but kept separate from legal authority.
• Trusted access should be prepared before someone needs to search for it.

Make the planner practical before it is emotional

The first job is to make the essentials findable: who to contact, where documents are stored, which accounts exist, what policies are active, and which instructions should be read first.

• Emergency contacts, advisors, executors, and care contacts
• Estate documents, directives, policies, identity files, and account records
• Household, pet, business, device, and subscription instructions

Include final wishes without confusing them with legal documents

A final wishes planner can capture memorial preferences, personal messages, care notes, and family instructions. Those notes are useful context, but they should sit beside formal documents instead of replacing them.

• Funeral, memorial, household, and personal preferences
• Plain-language notes for family and trusted people
• Clear labels for documents that require professional review

Keep digital records in the same plan

Modern planning includes online accounts, devices, backups, password managers, subscriptions, cloud storage, and important files that may not appear in paper folders.

• Account references, recovery paths, and provider contacts
• Digital assets that should be preserved, transferred, reviewed, or closed
• Reminders for records that change over time

Prepare access by role

A good end-of-life planner does not expose the whole vault to everyone. It prepares selected sections for the people who may need them and keeps the rest private.

• Family access for emergency and household information
• Executor access for documents, accounts, and policies
• Advisor access for the records tied to their responsibility

How this fits in Legacy Toolkit

Use this guide as a working checklist inside the desktop vault. Create or review the relevant profile sections, attach the documents that support each record, add reminders where information can go stale, and share only the sections a trusted person needs for their role.

The goal is not to turn a private life into a public folder. The goal is to keep the plan legible, current, and controlled so the right person can find the right information without receiving the whole vault by default.

• Profile sections keep the plan readable instead of turning it into a loose notes file.
• Document attachments keep proof beside the account, asset, policy, or instruction it supports.
• Trusted access lets you prepare a handoff without exposing the full vault by default.

End-of-life planner checklist

Treat this as a first pass, not a final legal packet. Review the items, fill in what is missing, and return to the plan whenever a provider, account, advisor, family role, or document changes.

• Record contacts, advisors, executor details, and emergency instructions.
• Attach estate, healthcare, insurance, identity, financial, and property documents.
• List accounts, subscriptions, devices, backups, and digital assets.
• Write final wishes and family notes in plain language.
• Set reminders and trusted access for the people who may need selected sections.

Official New Zealand references

These links are included for context. Legacy Toolkit helps organise records and does not replace legal, financial, tax, medical, or court advice.

• New Zealand Government: What to organise before you die
• New Zealand Government: What to do when someone dies
• New Zealand Government: Enduring power of attorney
• New Zealand Government: Personal care and welfare enduring power of attorney