How to write a legacy letter to your children (and when they should read it)

A legacy letter to your children is a letter that passes on your memories, values and hopes, written so it still means something years from now. Write it in parts, keep the tone generous rather than instructive, decide when they should read it, and revisit it every few years.

The same approach works for a letter to your son, a letter to your daughter, or one letter to all your kids. Prompts by age and by milestone are further down.

Legacy letter, ethical will: same thing

A legacy letter is also called an ethical will, and the idea is old. According to My Jewish Learning, the Jewish tradition of the tzava'ah reaches back to the patriarch Jacob, who blessed his children near the end of his life and told them where he wanted to be buried. Sages in the Talmud left deathbed instructions, and in the 12th century Judah ibn Tibbon wrote a well known ethical will to his son Samuel.

The same article notes that older ethical wills covered debts, burial wishes and blessings, while modern ones lean toward wisdom and reflection. They are often written as a letter to one's children.

The practice also found a home in hospice care. Barry K. Baines, MD, associate medical director of Hospice of the Twin Cities in Minnesota according to his publisher, wrote Ethical Wills: Putting Your Values on Paper, which describes an ethical will as a text that communicates personal values, beliefs, blessings and advice to relatives and future generations.

A legacy letter is not a legal will

An ethical will has no legal effect. It cannot leave property to anyone, name a guardian for a minor child or override your will. The University of Florida's extension fact sheet on ethical wills starts from exactly that contrast: a traditional will transfers worldly possessions, and an ethical will passes on values, ideas and personal reflections.

Handle the legal side with a lawyer. The letter is free to say everything a legal document leaves out.

What the research suggests about the people who receive it

We found little research on legacy letters from healthy parents. The closest evidence comes from dignity therapy, a palliative care approach studied by researchers at the University of Manitoba, in which a person with a terminal illness talks through what they most want remembered and the conversation is edited into a document for their family.

In a 2007 study in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, McClement, Chochinov and colleagues surveyed 60 family members of patients who had done dignity therapy. Of those, 78% said the document helped them during their grief, and 77% said it would continue to be a source of comfort for them and their families.

That is a different situation from a healthy parent writing for ten years from now, so treat it as a signal rather than proof. The University of Florida guide makes a simpler observation: recipients of ethical wills tend to read and reread them. For what research says about writing to others more generally, see writing to the people you love.

What to include: a six-part structure

There is no required format. These six parts draw on the topic list in the University of Florida guide and on the dignity therapy question protocol, reproduced in a 2018 paper in Supportive Care in Cancer. Use what fits.

1. Specific memories

Start with something only you know. A detail does more work than an adjective.

An invented example: "The night you were born it rained so hard your dad parked two blocks from the hospital and ran."

2. Values, told as stories

Skip "always be honest." Tell them about a time honesty cost you something and why you would choose it again. A story gets remembered; a rule gets argued with.

3. What you learned, mistakes included

One dignity therapy question asks what you have learned about life that you would want to pass along. The Florida guide suggests a related topic: mistakes you have learned from. Advice lands better with a mistake behind it.

An invented example: "It took me years to understand that asking for help is not a burden. I hope you learn that sooner than I did."

4. Your hopes for them

Write hopes, not plans. "I hope you find friends who make you laugh" leaves room. "I hope you become a doctor" does not.

5. Permission and forgiveness

The Florida guide lists asking forgiveness for specific actions as a topic. You can also give permission: to fail, to change course, to live far away, to be nothing like you.

6. A few practical wishes

A family recipe, the story behind an heirloom, the name of a cousin who knows the family history. Legal matters stay with your will.

Prompts by your child's age

A letter to a young child, to read at 18

Write to the adult they will become. Describe who they are right now: the word they mispronounce, what scares them, what makes them laugh. Describe your own life too, because at 18 they will want to meet the person who wrote it.

A letter to a teenager

If things are tense, the letter is not the place to win the argument. Acknowledge that this stretch is hard, skip the play-by-play, and tell them something you see in them that nobody has said out loud.

A letter to an adult son or daughter

This can be a conversation between equals: what you understand now about how you raised them, what you would do differently, what you admire in the life they built.

Letters for milestones

• Graduation: what you remember from their first day of school, and what you hope they carry from this chapter besides the diploma.
• Wedding: what you learned about sharing a life, without advice about their partner.
• Their first child: what your first year as a parent was really like, and what nobody warned you about.

Tone: be with them, don't steer them

The University of Florida guide warns against using an ethical will as a weapon from the grave to control or chastise, and reminds writers that once you die, you cannot take anything back. A few signs a sentence weighs more than it helps:

• It asks for a promise they can't refuse: "never sell the house."
• It hands them a role they didn't choose: "you're in charge of your brothers now."
• It reopens an old wound to get the last word.

A quick test: read the line as your child at 30, on a bad week. If it leaves them freer, keep it.

Keep it current

The Florida guide recommends updating an ethical will whenever you feel the need, and suggests a second one to be read after your death if you share the first during your life. In practice:

• Date every version.
• Keep old versions instead of deleting them.
• Revisit it on a birthday or at the end of a chapter, not only in a crisis.
• Write a separate letter for each child, even if parts overlap.

Choosing when they read it

When a letter is opened changes how it is read. You can keep it on paper, for example inside a time capsule, and leave instructions with someone you trust, or you can schedule it.

With Rememver you record a private video message and write your letter in the message that goes with it, then choose when it arrives: on a date you pick, such as your daughter's 18th birthday, or after your passing, once the people you trust confirm it. Trustees never see the video or the message. Delivery is by email, so a letter for a young child needs an email address you keep current. Once you have bought a credit pack, you can edit the message, the recipient and the date until the capsule is delivered, so the letter can grow with your kids; the video itself cannot be replaced. As its terms put it, a capsule is a personal message with no legal force.

Whatever you use, keep a paper copy somewhere your family knows about.

Sources

• Jewish Ethical Wills (Tzava'ot), My Jewish Learning
• Ethical Wills: Putting Your Values on Paper (2006), Barry K. Baines, Hachette Book Group
• Estate Planning: Ethical Wills (FCS5237), Josephine Turner, University of Florida, IFAS Extension (EDIS)
• Dignity therapy: family member perspectives (J Palliat Med, 2007), PubMed, National Library of Medicine
• Perspectives of newly diagnosed advanced cancer patients receiving dignity therapy during cancer treatment (Support Care Cancer, 2018), Table 1, PubMed Central, National Library of Medicine
• Terms of Service, section 10: Rememver is not a will, Rememver