A Letter in Your Will, or a Message That Arrives on Its Own? What Each One Can and Cannot Do

Most people who want to leave words for their family do the obvious thing: they write a letter and put it with their will. It is a good instinct, and for some purposes it is exactly right. But a will and a letter are built for different jobs, and a letter that rides along with a will inherits the will's timing, its audience and its formality. Understanding the difference helps you put each kind of message where it will do the most good.

What a will is for

A will is a legal instrument. Its job is to say who receives your property, who is in charge of sorting it out, and who should care for children who are still minors. It has to be made and signed in the way the law where you live requires, and it is read by your executor, usually with a lawyer, some weeks after your death. Its language is precise because it will be relied on, possibly argued over, and enforced.

That is all a will is for. It is not a place for your voice. The clause that leaves your daughter the piano says nothing about the evenings you spent teaching her to play it.

What a letter with your will does

A letter of wishes is the usual companion. It sits in the same envelope as the will and covers the things a will does not: which grandchild should have which photograph, what you would like at the funeral, why you divided things the way you did. In most places it is not legally binding, but executors and courts take it seriously as a guide to what you meant.

People often add a second kind of letter to the bundle: a personal one. “To be opened by my children after I am gone.” This is where the fit starts to strain, for three reasons.

It arrives at the worst possible moment. The will is opened in the administrative fog of the first weeks: death certificates, bank letters, funeral bills. A personal letter surfaces in the middle of that, read in a solicitor's office or across a kitchen table covered in paperwork. It gets its one reading when nobody can take it in.

It arrives once, for everyone, at the same time. A letter with the will cannot wait for your son's wedding or your granddaughter's eighteenth. It cannot go to one person privately. The moment you might most have wanted to be present for is exactly the moment it cannot reach.

It is read by the wrong person first. The executor opens the envelope. If your letter to your partner is in there, it is in the executor's hands before it is in your partner's.

None of this makes the letter a bad idea. It makes it the wrong tool for some of the things people ask it to do.

What a delivered message does

A message set up to be delivered on its own does the opposite job. It is not a legal document and has no bearing on your estate. It exists to carry your words to a particular person at a particular moment, and to do so whether or not you are there.

That means it can do the things the letter in the envelope cannot:

• Arrive later. On a date you choose, years away. A birthday, an anniversary, a milestone you hope to see and might not.
• Arrive privately. One message to one person, read alone, without passing through an executor or a family meeting.
• Arrive in your voice. A written message, or a recorded one, so a child who was small when you died can hear how you spoke.
• Wait for the right trigger. Not the reading of the will, but a moment two people you trust agree has come, or a check-in you stop answering.

And it has limits of its own, which are worth being honest about. It cannot leave anyone anything. It cannot appoint an executor or a guardian. It is not a place to keep your will, your power of attorney or any document that needs to have legal effect; those belong with your lawyer, made and signed the way the law requires. A message service carries words. It should not be asked to carry the paperwork.

Putting each thing where it belongs

The simplest way to think about it:

Notice that nothing on the right-hand side replaces anything on the left. The will and the letter of wishes handle the estate. The delivered messages handle the people. Doing both is not belt and braces; it is two different jobs.

A practical way to start

1. Get the will done first, with a lawyer, if you have been putting it off. Everything else is easier once that is settled, and no message can stand in for it.
2. Write the letter of wishes for the practical things, and keep it in the envelope with the will.
3. Then write to the people. One message at a time, one moment at a time. Start with the person you would most want to reach, and the day you would most want to be there for.

The letter in the envelope will be read once, in a hard week, by everyone at once. The message that arrives on its own will be read when it is needed, by the person it was for. Most families would be glad of both.