THE DEATH DISPATCH
Issue No. 7 · {{current_date_full}}
A newsletter about death you’ll actually look forward to opening. Weekly. Honest. Never a euphemism.
FROM STEPHANIE
Cake, one of the most recommended free places to write a will, got bought by a funeral conglomerate in 2024 and shut down without much notice. Lantern went the same way in 2023, bought and closed within months. If your plan lives only inside an account, it can disappear the day the company that owns the account gets sold. We keep a running comparison of which planning platforms are still active, and what happens to your documents if they aren't.
THE NUMBER
$8,300
That's the median cost of a funeral with viewing and burial in the U.S., according to the National Funeral Directors Association, and it has climbed faster than general inflation most years.
THIS WEEK'S READ
What Happened to Cake
Cake was one of the internet's most recommended free will-writing sites until a funeral conglomerate bought it and quietly shut it down. If you built your plan there, it's gone unless you saved a copy, and plenty of old articles still send people to a website that no longer exists.
THE PRACTICAL PART
Print the one-page checklist
Open the printable checklist, print it, and put it with the other papers your family already knows about. It covers the will, the accounts, the digital logins, and the funeral in one pass. You don't have to finish it today. You just have to know where it is.
WORTH A LOOK
Death Changes at the State Line
Where you live can dramatically change what your family pays, files, and waits for after a death. MORTL’s first annual State Death Data report compares all 50 states and Washington, D.C., including probate limits ranging from $15,000 to $400,000, death certificate fees from $5 to $35, cremation waits from zero to 48 hours, and the states where a home can transfer without probate.
FROM THE DIRECTORY
MORTL's directory lists more than 5,600 hospice and palliative care providers across the country. Each one is checked against its own phone number, address, and website before it's added. It's not a recommendation, just a place to start when you don't know who to call.
You're going to die. Let's talk about it.
MORTL