Getting Affairs in Order: A Compassionate Checklist

Getting your affairs in order comes down to four piles of work: medical documents that protect your voice, legal documents that protect your wishes, financial and practical information your family will need, and the conversations that hold it all together. None of it requires doing everything in one weekend.

Whether you're planning ahead while healthy or doing this alongside a serious illness, here is a checklist you can work through one piece at a time.

Start With the Medical Documents

These come first because they protect you while you're still living.

• Advance directive. Oregon's form is free, requires no lawyer or notary, and lets you name a health care representative and state your care wishes. Our step-by-step Oregon advance directive guide walks through it.
• POLST, if appropriate. For people with serious illness, a POLST turns treatment wishes into medical orders. Your doctor or hospice team can help.
• A current medication list and the names of your doctors, kept somewhere your family can find.

Give copies of the advance directive to your representative and your physician. A document no one can find might as well not exist. Our advance care planning page explains how these pieces fit together.

Gather the Legal Documents

You may already have some of these. The task now is making sure they're current and findable:

• Will and/or trust documents
• Financial power of attorney
• Marriage, divorce, or adoption papers
• Property deeds, vehicle titles
• Military discharge papers (these unlock veteran burial benefits, so they matter)

If you don't have a will or power of attorney, consider talking with an attorney; our overview of wills, powers of attorney, and the documents families forget explains what each does in plain language. Review anything more than a few years old; outdated beneficiaries cause real heartache.

Organize the Financial and Practical Information

Your family doesn't need access to everything today. They need to know where everything is. Make a simple inventory:

1. Accounts: banks, retirement accounts, pensions, investments
2. Insurance: life, health, long-term care, home, auto, with policy locations
3. Bills that auto-pay and bills that don't
4. Debts: mortgage, loans, credit cards
5. Digital life: where passwords are kept (a password manager, a notebook, a sealed envelope), plus phone and email access
6. Keys and codes: safe deposit box, home safe, storage units

Write down where each item lives, put the list somewhere secure, and tell one or two trusted people how to find it. That single page of paper can save your family months of detective work.

Write Down Your Personal Wishes

This is the pile people skip, and the one families treasure most.

• Funeral or memorial preferences: burial or cremation, the tone you'd want, music, readings. Even rough notes help; our article on funeral planning basics covers the decisions involved.
• Who gets the things that matter: not the valuables in the will, but the recipe box, the fishing rods, the quilt. Label them or write it down.
• What you want said and known. Some people write letters to their children or grandchildren. Some record a video. Some just tell stories at the kitchen table and let family write them down. All of it counts.

Have the Conversations

Documents organize information. Conversations carry meaning. Aim for at least these:

• With your health care representative: what a good day looks like for you, and what you'd want when treatment stops helping. Our guide to choosing a health care representative includes a conversation outline.
• With your family: where the documents are, what your wishes are, and, when it's true, that you've made your choices freely and at peace.
• With your doctor or hospice team: what's ahead, and what choices will need making.

These talks are hard to start and almost always a relief to finish. Most families say afterward: "I'm glad we did that."

A Gentle Pace Is Fine

If you're doing this during a serious illness, the list above can feel like a mountain. It isn't all-or-nothing. The advance directive and the "where things are" inventory deliver the most protection for the least effort. Start there. Let the rest come as energy allows, and let family members carry pieces of it; many are grateful for something concrete to do.

How Engrace Hospice Can Help

Our social workers help patients and families with exactly this work: sorting out which documents matter, connecting with community resources, and sitting alongside the hard conversations. It's part of hospice care, not an extra. We're locally owned and based in Pendleton, serving Umatilla County, Morrow County, and Eastern Oregon, with a team member on call 24/7.

If your family could use a steady hand with planning, or you have questions about hospice itself, call us at (541) 263-7494 or contact us online. We'll meet you wherever you are in the process.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where should I start when getting affairs in order?

Start with the medical documents: an advance directive naming your health care representative, and a POLST if serious illness makes one appropriate. These protect your voice first. Legal, financial, and personal items can follow at a gentler pace.

What documents do my family members need to be able to find?

At minimum: your advance directive, any will or trust, insurance policies, financial account information, property deeds or titles, and a list of where passwords and keys live. They don't need to read everything now; they need to know where everything is.

Is it too late to get affairs in order after starting hospice?

No. Many families do this work during hospice, often with help from the hospice social worker. Even a partial effort, such as naming a representative, gathering key papers, or writing down wishes, spares your family enormous stress later.

Do I need a lawyer to get my affairs in order?

Not for everything. Oregon's advance directive requires no attorney, and much of the work is gathering and organizing. For wills, trusts, and powers of attorney, consulting an attorney is wise, especially if your family or finances are complicated.