The document
The Letter of Intent.
The deep document: every routine, warning sign, and hard-won lesson, written down for whoever one day cares for someone you love. Everyone is told to write one. Almost nobody does, because the blank page wins.
Not a will. Not a trust. Not legally binding — and that is the point.
Everything a stranger could never guess.
A Letter of Intent is the plain-language companion to an estate plan or a special needs trust. Your attorney writes what the law needs. This is what a person needs: how your loved one communicates, what calms them, which doctor to call, what a good day looks like, and what a bad one asks for.
No lawyer is required to write one, and no legal language belongs in it. It is addressed to a reader, not a court — the trustee, the guardian, the sibling, the aide starting on Monday. It works alongside the documents your attorney prepares, and replaces none of them.
This tool replaces the blank page with small, answerable questions, and turns your answers into a document you can print, file, and hand over.
Free, printable, and made entirely on your device. Nothing is uploaded, and we never see a word.
One set of answers. Two letters, narrowed for their readers.
The first question you are asked is who this letter has to reach. It is the one answer that decides which letters you get — and each is narrowed for its reader, because a trustee should not have to read sixty pages to find the benefits, and nobody reads a binder at 7am.
The Letter of Intent
What it contains
- Money, the benefits, and the trust
- Legal authority, and who decides what
- Health, housing, school and work
- Enough of the person that a trustee who never met them can judge well
The Letter for the Caregiver
What it contains
- Routines, and the shape of a day
- How they communicate, and how to talk with them
- Behavior, allergies, and the emergency plan
- Health as it is lived, food, and personal care
- The home, school or work, and the people who matter
One form can write both. You answer the questions once. Each letter is then written for its own reader, so nobody is handed the other one’s pages — and you never type anything twice.
Written once. Read by everyone who steps in.
The trustee
Money only helps if someone knows what it is for. A trust document says what a trustee may spend. It cannot say that the swim class on Tuesdays is the reason the week holds together, or that the aide who already knows the routine is worth keeping. The letter says it.
The guardian, or whoever takes over
The first week is the hardest one. What the morning has to look like, what calms a bad hour, which foods are refused and which are non-negotiable. Everything you would have told them in person, if anyone had thought to ask you first.
The sibling who steps in
Usually the person who inherits the job, rarely the one who was taught it. They grew up beside it and still do not know the medication schedule, the pharmacy, or which doctor actually returns calls. Written down once, it stops being something they have to reconstruct.
A new doctor, school, or program
Handed across the desk at intake. The history behind the chart: how pain gets communicated, what a meltdown is actually signalling, what has already been tried and did not work.
You, a year from now
The only written record of what you decided, and why. Read it every year and update what has changed. Most families find the second pass easier than the first — the blank page is already gone.
Prepare
Every question, before you start.
These are the 21 sections the letter can ask about. Open any one to read what it asks for. You will not see all of them: a few questions at the start shape the form around the person you care for, and the sections that do not fit are never asked. Nothing is required, and a section you skip simply will not appear in the letter.
It comes with a one-page emergency sheet and a set of care cards, from the same answers.
Start with ten minutes.
You don’t have to do this all at once, and you don’t have to do it perfectly. A letter with three sections filled in is already worth more to a future caregiver than the perfect letter that never got written.
Answer what you can
Short sections, every question optional. Jump around. A ten-minute sitting is a real contribution.
It saves only on your device
It saves after every answer, so you can stop mid-sentence tonight and pick it up on Thursday. No online account and no login, so it saves in this browser only: download a backup file to switch devices.
Download the documents and your backup file
The polished, printable letters, the one-page emergency sheet, and your care cards, plus the backup file that lets you pick the letter up again later, or on another device.
No online account and no email address. It saves on this device as you go, and you can download a backup file at any time.