The ethical will: leaving values, not just stuff

This article is about what an ethical will is, where it came from, what it tends to contain, and how to write one without it becoming a chore or a confession. It is not a substitute for a notarised will and it does not affect your nalatenschap (legacy, in the legal and financial sense). It sits beside those documents, and it answers a different question.

A 1,500-year-old tradition, quietly revived

The practice of writing an ethical letter to one's children dates back at least to medieval Jewish life. Surviving examples from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, collected and translated by the historian Israel Abrahams in his two-volume Hebrew Ethical Wills (Jewish Publication Society, 1926, reissued 2006), show parents writing to their children about how to behave, whom to trust, what books to read, how to treat servants, and how to remember God in daily life. The letters are direct, sometimes blunt, and almost never about money. They were written to be read after the parent's death, but also, often, during their lifetime, as a kind of standing instruction.

The tradition predates Abrahams's collection by many centuries. It draws on a passage in Genesis where Jacob, on his deathbed, gathers his sons and tells each of them what he sees in them. Over time, this scene became a model: a parent, near the end of life, putting into words what they most want to leave behind.

The ethical will moved out of strictly religious contexts in the second half of the twentieth century, partly through the work of physicians and rabbis in the United States, and partly through the modern hospice movement in Europe. Today it is recommended, in various forms, by palliative care services across the Netherlands, including by VPTZ (Vrijwilligers Palliatieve Terminale Zorg), the national organisation that trains volunteers who sit with dying people and their families.

What an ethical will is, and what it is not

An ethical will is a written or recorded message in which a person passes on what is most important to them, beyond their property. Common contents include:

• Lessons learned, in plain language, from the writer's own life.
• Beliefs and values they want to name out loud.
• Stories about their parents and grandparents that would otherwise be lost.
• Apologies, where they are owed.
• Acknowledgements of the people who shaped them.
• Hopes and, sometimes, gentle requests for the people who remain.

It is not a contract. It does not bind anyone. It cannot decide who gets what. In Dutch law, decisions about property and money are made through a testament drawn up by a notaris, and decisions about personal items can be made through a handwritten codicil. An ethical will sits outside that system. The two complement each other: the testament tells your nabestaanden (next of kin) who inherits, and the ethical will tells them who you were and what you hoped for them.

It is also not a confession or a settling of scores. The literature on ethical wills, including pastoral guidance used by Dutch hospices, is consistent on this: an ethical will should leave the reader feeling held, not interrogated. If something needs to be apologised for, it can be apologised for plainly. If something needs to be acknowledged, it can be acknowledged. But the document is not the place to litigate old grievances. Those belong to a different conversation, in person if possible.

Why this matters more than people expect

The case for ethical wills is partly intuitive. Anyone who has lost a parent knows how much you would give for one more letter, one more recording, one more honest paragraph. But there is also a clinical case, and it has a name: dignity therapy.

Dignity therapy is a brief, structured psychotherapeutic intervention developed by the Canadian psychiatrist Harvey Max Chochinov for patients near the end of life. Patients are guided through a set of questions about their lives, what mattered, what they are proud of, what they want the people they love to know, and the conversation is recorded, transcribed, edited, and given back to the patient and their family as a "generativity document." It is, in essence, a guided ethical will.

In a randomised controlled trial published in The Lancet Oncology in 2011 (Chochinov et al., "Effect of dignity therapy on distress and end-of-life experience in terminally ill patients"), patients who completed dignity therapy were significantly more likely than those receiving standard palliative care to report that the intervention had been helpful, had improved their sense of dignity, had changed how their family saw and appreciated them, and would be of help to their family. An earlier study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (Chochinov et al., 2005) showed similar findings on dignity, hope, and meaning at end of life.

What this body of research suggests is something quietly important: putting your life and values into words, on purpose, near the end, is not just nice for the family. It is good for the writer too. It tends to leave people feeling that their life has shape and meaning, and that they have given something back.

The same intuition runs through the palliative care guidance on Pallialine, the official Dutch palliative care guidelines portal, where attention to zingeving (meaning-making) and life review is treated as a core element of good end-of-life care, not an optional extra.

What an ethical will tends to contain

There is no fixed format. The ones that read best, however, tend to share a structure. Most include some version of these elements:

• A short opening that names the reader. "To my children." "To my granddaughter, when you are old enough to read this." Naming the reader makes the letter a letter, not an essay.
• A few central beliefs, stated plainly. What you actually believe about how to live. Not an inventory of opinions, but the three or four things you would not want forgotten.
• Stories. One or two memories that show, rather than tell. A grandparent's kitchen. A decision that turned out to matter. A failure you learned from.
• Acknowledgements. The people, named, who made you who you are. This includes people inside the family and people outside it.
• What you hope for the reader. Not instructions, hopes. The difference matters: instructions can feel like a burden after a death, hopes feel like a blessing.
• An ending that releases the reader. Many writers end with some version of "you do not owe me anything, and I am proud of you." This is the line, more than any other, that hospice workers report as the one families read again.

How to start, when starting feels too big

Most people who decide to write an ethical will do not finish on the first attempt. The blank page is too wide. A few practices help.

Write to one person at a time. A letter to "the family" is harder to write and harder to receive than a letter to a named child or grandchild. You can write more than one. Many people do.

Set a timer. Twenty minutes, once. You are not writing a finished document. You are getting the first sentences down. Hospice volunteers in the VPTZ tradition often suggest a single guiding prompt, such as "what do I most want them to know about me," and a fixed amount of time.

Use your own voice. If you would never use the word "journey" in conversation, do not use it on the page. The letter your family will treasure is the one that sounds like you, not like a greeting card.

Date it, and be willing to revise. An ethical will is not a one-shot document. People often write a first version in their fifties or sixties and revise it after major life events: a death, a birth, a diagnosis, a reconciliation.

If writing is hard, record. A voice memo on a phone is a perfectly valid ethical will. Some families later transcribe it; some keep the audio. Both work.

How it lives alongside your other documents

An ethical will is a personal document, not a legal one, but it still benefits from being placed thoughtfully. The standard advice from Dutch palliative care guidance and hospice practice is straightforward: tell at least one trusted person where it is, and decide in advance whether it should be opened during your lifetime, on a specific date, or only after your death. Ethical wills that no one knows about tend to stay undiscovered.

Some families read the letter together at the funeral. Others read it privately, alone, weeks later. There is no right answer. What matters is that the people for whom it was written can find it, and that they know it exists.

In the app

The Personal Portal has Stage 7, "Your Story" — three sections that together form your ethical will: your life story (8 questions), your values (6 prompts), and messages across time (7 slots, from a grandchild's wedding to a hard year). You answer at your own pace, in your voice. (A writing companion is in development and will be available later in the beta to suggest the next question if you get stuck.)

Join the beta →

Closed beta — access by invitation.

Sources

1. Chochinov, H. M., Hack, T., Hassard, T., Kristjanson, L. J., McClement, S., & Harlos, M. (2005). "Dignity therapy: a novel psychotherapeutic intervention for patients near the end of life." Journal of Clinical Oncology, 23(24), 5520-5525.
2. Chochinov, H. M., Kristjanson, L. J., Breitbart, W., McClement, S., Hack, T. F., Hassard, T., & Harlos, M. (2011). "Effect of dignity therapy on distress and end-of-life experience in terminally ill patients: a randomised controlled trial." The Lancet Oncology, 12(8), 753-762.
3. Abrahams, I. (1926, reissued 2006). Hebrew Ethical Wills. Jewish Publication Society. Two-volume historical collection of medieval Jewish ethical letters (tzava'ot).
4. Pallialine -- official Dutch palliative care guidelines portal, on zingeving and end-of-life care. https://palliaweb.nl/ (Pallialine guidelines)
5. VPTZ Nederland -- Vrijwilligers Palliatieve Terminale Zorg, training and guidance materials for end-of-life volunteers. https://vptz.nl/