Sample legacy letters and templates you can actually use

Most people who sit down to write a legacy letter don't struggle because they have nothing to say. They struggle because they have everything to say and no idea where to start.

You know the feeling. You open a blank document or pull out a sheet of paper, and suddenly the weight of trying to distill your entire relationship with someone into words feels impossible. So you close the document. You put the paper back in the drawer. You tell yourself you'll do it when you're ready, which is another way of saying you won't do it at all.

What you need isn't inspiration. You need a starting point. A framework that gives you the first few sentences so your own voice can take over from there.

That's what this guide is. Six types of sample legacy letters, each with a template opening and a structure you can adapt. These aren't meant to be copied word for word. They're meant to get you past the blank page and into the part where you're actually saying something real.

If you want to see full-length legacy letter examples written as complete letters, five legacy letter examples that actually sound like real people has those. This post is the toolkit. That one is the gallery.

The "what I want you to know" letter

This is the most common legacy letter, and the most versatile. It's for the person you love who might not fully understand what they mean to you, because you've never quite spelled it out.

Maybe you show it through actions. Maybe you've said "I love you" a thousand times but never explained the specific reasons why. This letter fills in those gaps.

Sample opening:

I've been thinking about what I'd want you to know if I couldn't tell you in person anymore. Not the big obvious things. You already know I love you. What I'm not sure you know is why. And the why matters, because it's the part that's specifically about you and nobody else.

What to include:

• A specific quality you admire in them that they probably don't see in themselves
• A memory that shows who they are at their best (not a big event, but a small moment that stuck with you)
• What your life would have looked like without them in it
• The thing you most want them to carry forward

What to avoid:

Don't try to summarize your entire relationship. Pick one thread and follow it. A letter about everything becomes a letter about nothing. If you find yourself writing "and another thing," that's a sign you might need two separate letters.

The "I'm sorry" letter

This one sits in your chest like a stone. You know you need to write it. You've maybe even rehearsed it in your head a hundred times. But putting it on paper makes it real in a way that feels exposed.

Write it anyway. An undelivered apology is a weight you're asking someone else to carry after you're gone. If you've been putting off making something right, a legacy letter can do what a conversation never quite managed.

For a deeper look at this kind of letter, writing a legacy letter for forgiveness and reconciliation goes into the emotional side of the process.

Sample opening:

I owe you an apology, and I owe you a real one. Not the kind where I explain why I did what I did until it starts to sound like I'm defending it. I want to tell you what I got wrong, without conditions, because you deserved better and I should have said this a long time ago.

What to include:

• Name the specific thing you did or failed to do. Vagueness reads as avoidance.
• Acknowledge the impact on them, not just your own guilt about it
• Resist the urge to explain your reasons (if you must, save it for later in the letter, after the apology has landed)
• Don't ask for forgiveness. Offer the apology and let them decide what to do with it.

What to avoid:

The word "but." As in, "I'm sorry I missed your recital, but work was really demanding that year." The moment you add "but," the apology evaporates. Also avoid making the letter about your suffering over the mistake. This letter is for them, not for your relief.

The "here's what I learned" letter

This is the wisdom letter. The one where you take everything you figured out the hard way and hand it to someone you hope won't have to learn it all from scratch.

The trick here is honesty. Nobody wants advice from someone who pretends they had it all figured out. The lessons that land are the ones that come with the story of how you learned them, including the part where you got it wrong first.

Sample opening:

I'm not going to pretend I was wise. Most of what I know, I learned by doing the wrong thing and paying for it. But I've been around long enough to notice some patterns, and I figure the least I can do is write them down so you don't have to trip over all the same rocks I did.

What to include:

• Three to five lessons, maximum. More than that and the letter starts to feel like a lecture.
• For each lesson, include the story behind it. Not "be patient" but "I almost ruined my marriage because I couldn't sit with discomfort for more than thirty seconds, and here's what that looked like."
• At least one lesson you're still working on. Admitting you haven't mastered everything makes the rest more believable.
• Permission to ignore your advice. Seriously. Tell them they're allowed to figure out their own path.

What to avoid:

Platitudes. "Follow your heart." "Everything happens for a reason." "Life is short." These are true, maybe, but they're so worn down that they slide right off the reader. If you can find it on a motivational poster, find a different way to say it.

The "don't forget" letter

This is the letter that preserves what would otherwise disappear with you. Family recipes nobody wrote down. The story behind your grandmother's ring. The reason your family moved when you were twelve. The name of the teacher who changed everything.

Every family has knowledge that lives in one person's head. When that person is gone, the knowledge goes with them. This letter is your chance to write it down.

Sample opening:

There are things about our family that only I know now, and that bothers me. Not in a dramatic way, just in the practical sense that if I don't write this down, it's gone. So here's what I want you to have.

What to include:

• Stories about relatives the reader never met, or met too young to remember
• The origins of family traditions (even if the origin is "your great-aunt thought it was funny and it just stuck")
• Practical knowledge: recipes, the trick to starting the cabin's finicky generator, where the property line actually falls
• Context for family dynamics that might not make sense without backstory

What to avoid:

Don't edit out the imperfect parts. The interesting family stories are rarely the flattering ones. Your grandfather's stubbornness, your mother's terrible sense of direction, the Thanksgiving where Uncle Roy brought a date nobody was expecting. Those are the details that make family history feel real instead of like a press release.

If you're thinking about writing letters for different family members, a "don't forget" letter can be written once and shared with everyone. It's one of the few legacy letters that works as a group document.

The "permission" letter

This might be the most generous letter you can write. It's the one that gives someone permission to do the thing they'll feel guilty about after you're gone: move on, be happy, sell the house, change careers, fall in love again, stop grieving on your timeline.

People carry an astonishing amount of guilt about honoring the dead. They keep houses they can't afford because it feels wrong to sell. They stay in grief longer than they need to because they think moving on means forgetting. A permission letter, written in your own words, can release them from that.

Sample opening:

I know you. I know that after I'm gone, you're going to feel guilty about being happy. You're going to wonder if it's too soon to laugh, too soon to make plans, too soon to live like someone who isn't carrying the weight of losing me. So I'm writing this down while I can: you have my permission. Not that you need it. But I know it helps to hear it.

What to include:

• Name the specific thing you're giving permission for. "Be happy" is good. "Sell the house if it's too much to keep up. I loved that house, but I loved it because you were in it, not because of the house itself." is better.
• Acknowledge that grief doesn't follow a schedule and that whatever they're feeling is valid
• Tell them what you actually want for their life going forward. Be concrete.
• If relevant, give explicit permission to love someone else. This is hard to write and hard to read, but for a surviving spouse, it can be the most important sentence in the letter.

What to avoid:

Don't be so generous that it sounds like you don't care. "Do whatever you want" reads as indifference. The goal is to show that you care enough about their future to release your claim on it. There's a difference between "I don't mind" and "I want this for you."

The "hard truth" letter

This is the rarest legacy letter, and the riskiest. It's the one where you tell someone something they need to hear that you couldn't say while you were alive. Maybe because the timing was never right, or because it would have damaged the relationship, or because you weren't brave enough.

Handle this one carefully. A letter from beyond the grave has enormous power, and power without the ability to have a follow-up conversation is dangerous. But sometimes the truth matters more than comfort, and sometimes love means saying the thing nobody else will say.

Sample opening:

I thought about whether to write this. I went back and forth, honestly. But I decided that leaving you without this would be a kind of dishonesty, and I've always respected you too much to be dishonest with you, even when honesty was the harder option.

What to include:

• Lead with love. Make it clear this letter comes from caring, not resentment.
• Be direct. If you've decided to say the hard thing, say it cleanly. Don't bury it under three paragraphs of softening.
• Offer what you can in terms of support or direction. "I think you drink too much" hits differently when followed by "and I've watched you be extraordinary when you're sober, which tells me the person underneath it is still there."
• End with your belief in them. The hard truth needs to land on a foundation of "I'm telling you this because I believe you can handle it."

What to avoid:

Cruelty disguised as honesty. Before you write this letter, ask yourself: is this for them or for me? If you're settling a score, don't write the letter. If you're trying to help someone you love make a change they need to make, that's different. The test is whether the letter leaves the reader feeling more loved or less.

Mixing and matching

Real legacy letters rarely fit neatly into one category. A letter to your daughter might start as a "what I want you to know" letter, detour into a "don't forget" section about your grandmother, and end with the permission to build her own kind of life. That's fine. These categories are starting points, not walls.

For a full walkthrough of the writing process from start to finish, how to write a meaningful legacy letter covers everything from choosing a recipient to deciding how the letter gets delivered.

The most important thing is that you start. Pick the template that matches the conversation you've been avoiding. Write the opening in your own words, borrowing as much or as little from the samples as you need. Then keep going. The letter will tell you where it wants to go if you let it.

You don't have to write all six. You might only need one. But the one you need to write? You probably already know which one it is. You've been thinking about it since you started reading this.

Go write that one.

When I Die Files gives you a secure, private space to write the letters that matter most — and make sure they reach the right people at the right time.