Obituary checklist

Obituary Checklist

A practical obituary checklist for families gathering names, dates, service details, life-story notes, donation wording, newspaper requirements, costs, and privacy checks before publication.

GeneratorWriting guidePrintable worksheetTemplateShort examplesWordingCost guideMistakes to avoidNewspaper submissionPrivacy checklistExamples

Use This Before Drafting

A useful obituary checklist does more than collect facts. It helps the family decide what belongs in public, what needs verification, what the newspaper or funeral home requires, and what can move to a longer online story if the printed notice is too expensive or too short.

Work through the list once before writing, then again before approving the proof. The second pass catches misspelled names, missing survivors, unsafe public details, broken donation links, and cost surprises.

Checklist

What To Gather

Essential public facts

  • Full legal name, preferred name, maiden name, nicknames, suffixes, and spelling checks
  • Age, city of residence, date of death, and whether place or cause of death should stay private
  • Funeral, visitation, memorial, burial, livestream, or private-service details
  • Funeral home, cemetery, officiant, reception, or memorial-page information if it belongs in the notice

Life story details

  • Birthplace, parents, childhood places, schools, degrees, military service, work, awards, and affiliations
  • Marriage, partnership, children, grandchildren, chosen family, caregivers, mentors, and close community
  • One specific scene, habit, object, recipe, route, room, tool, phrase, or photograph that makes the person recognizable
  • Claims that need confirmation through records, clippings, letters, public sources, or family documents

Family and survivor review

  • Surviving family names and relationships in the order the family prefers
  • Predeceased family members, former spouses, step-relatives, and chosen-family language
  • Name spellings, city names, school names, organization names, and titles
  • A final family reader who can check tone, fairness, privacy, and missing context

Publication choices

  • Whether this should be a short death notice, a fuller obituary, a funeral-home page, or an online memorial story
  • Newspaper deadline, proof-of-death rules, word or line limits, photo rules, payment timing, and proofing process
  • Whether the funeral home will submit the obituary or the family will contact the publication directly
  • Whether print space is limited enough to use a short notice plus a fuller online story

Cost and quote review

  • Minimum obituary or death-notice charge
  • Whether pricing is by word, line, column inch, package, photo, run day, or online bundle
  • Whether the quote includes print, online archive, guestbook, photos, extra days, and partner-site placement
  • Whether a funeral-home statement lists the obituary as a third-party or cash-advance item

Privacy and safety pass

  • Remove or generalize full birth date, home address, exact service timing risks, financial details, and private medical details
  • Verify donation links, memorial fund names, charity pages, and family-support instructions before publication
  • Leave out family conflict, rumors, legal claims, and sensitive facts that do not help the public story
  • Save a clean approved draft so copied, altered, or fake obituary pages can be checked later

Final Review Before Publication

  1. Read the obituary aloud once for tone and once for facts.
  2. Check every name, date, place, service time, and link against the source of truth.
  3. Ask whether the first paragraph still works if a newspaper truncates the rest.
  4. Confirm the price and proof before payment or final approval.
  5. Keep the fuller life story somewhere permanent if the newspaper version must be short.

Use this page for funeral-home planning pages, end-of-life checklists, family resource hubs, memorial-planning articles, and obituary writing resources that need a clear pre-publication checklist. For a private first draft, use the free obituary generator, then return here for the family review pass. For a fuller writing process, use the obituary story writing guide. For short notices and word-limit drafts, use the short obituary examples. For opening lines, family-list wording, service wording, and death announcement phrases, use the obituary wording examples. For a print-friendly notes page, use the obituary story worksheet. For price, line, photo, and quote questions, use the obituary cost guide. For newspaper deadlines and proof rules, use the newspaper obituary submission checklist. For common proofing errors and corrections, use the obituary mistakes checklist. For details to leave out, use the obituary privacy checklist. For copyable structures, use the life story obituary template. For sample story patterns, use the obituary examples page.

https://www.finalnotes.page/obituary-checklist/
References

Sources And Checklist Examples

Examples

Read Source-Backed Obituary Stories