An obituary planning form is a fill-in-the-blank worksheet that gathers the names, dates, biographical details, and service logistics a newspaper, funeral home, or online memorial site needs to publish an obituary. Working through one in advance, or as soon as possible after a death, spares the family from reconstructing graduation years and middle names during a grief-soaked week. The form itself isn’t filed with any agency; it feeds the text that gets published. Accuracy on the first pass matters, because a misspelled grandchild’s name or a wrong date is exactly the sort of error that reaches print and can’t easily be pulled back.
What a Standard Form Asks For
Layouts vary, but most forms walk through the same categories in roughly the order a finished obituary reads:
- Full legal name, plus maiden name, nickname, or professional name.
- Date and place of birth, date and place of death, and age at death.
- City and state of residence (not a street address).
- Schools attended, degrees, and graduation years.
- Primary employers, job titles, military service, awards.
- Memberships, volunteer work, hobbies, community involvement.
- Survivors: spouse or partner, children and their spouses, grandchildren, siblings, other close relatives.
- Predeceased immediate family.
- Service logistics: date, time, and location for visitation, funeral, memorial, and graveside services, plus the officiant.
- Preferred memorial contributions, with mailing addresses or website links.
- Funeral home name, address, and website.
Treat each field as its own small task. Work top to bottom, and leave blanks for anything you need to verify instead of guessing.
How to Fill in the Biographical Fields
Start with the full legal name as it appears on government identification. If the person was widely known by a different name, note the nickname in its own field or in parentheses. Maiden names matter for searchability, since old friends often remember someone by the name they knew decades ago.
Education and career details give the obituary its narrative shape. List degrees with the institution and approximate year, and mention one or two defining jobs rather than a full chronological résumé. Memberships and interests round out the picture: the service organizations, the volunteer causes, the hobbies that defined weekends.
Veterans and Military Service
For a veteran, the form should capture branch of service, rank at discharge, years served, and any conflicts or campaigns. This is more than biography. Federal law requires the Department of Defense to provide a funeral honors detail for any eligible veteran upon request, which at minimum includes the folding and presentation of a U.S. flag and the playing of Taps.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 USC 1491 – Funeral Honors Functions at Funerals for Veterans Requesting those honors requires the veteran’s DD Form 214 (Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty) or another document showing honorable service.2Military OneSource. Military Funeral Honors Directors and Planners If you’re completing the form in advance, add a line noting where the DD-214 is kept.
Family and Survivors
Survivors are listed in a conventional order: spouse or partner first, then children (usually oldest to youngest) with their spouses, then grandchildren, then siblings. After the living come those already gone. The phrase “preceded in death by” signals that shift and typically covers a spouse, parents, siblings, or children who died before the person.
Accuracy here is non-negotiable. Confirm the spelling of every name, double-check married names, and verify current cities of residence with relatives when you can. If a relationship is complicated — an estrangement, a divorce, an adoption — talk with close family before deciding what to publish. The form is a draft, so flag sensitive entries with a note for later discussion rather than making a unilateral call that ends up in print.
Service and Memorial Details
For every event the family is holding, record the exact date, time, street address, and venue name. Include the officiating clergy member, celebrant, or family friend so the funeral home can coordinate the program.
If the family prefers donations in lieu of flowers, name the organization in full and include a mailing address or website. “Donate to cancer research” leaves mourners guessing; a specific name and a URL removes the friction.
Virtual Attendance
Many services now offer a livestream. You can note the stream on the form, but think carefully before publishing a direct link in the obituary itself. General platforms like Facebook Live and YouTube Live can display ads alongside a service, content-detection tools sometimes cut audio mid-hymn, and public comments can surface hurtful posts. Purpose-built funeral streaming services give the family more control over who watches and what gets recorded. A common compromise is to share the link privately by email or through a password-protected memorial page rather than printing it in the newspaper.
What to Leave Off the Published Version
A planning form asks for more than you should put in print. The IRS warns that identity thieves mine published obituaries to build profiles of the deceased, then file fraudulent tax returns, open credit accounts, or take out loans in their name.3Internal Revenue Service. Identity Theft Guide for Individuals
The details that help criminals include exact date of birth, mother’s maiden name, middle name, and home address. Record them on the form for your own files, but keep them out of the published text. “Born in 1948 in Cleveland” is safer than a full birth date, and a city and state tell readers everything they need about residence without flagging a house that may sit empty during the service. After publication, send a copy of the death certificate to each of the three major credit bureaus and request a deceased alert on the credit reports.
Death Notice or Full Obituary
Know which product you’re paying for before you submit, because the two differ sharply in length and cost.
A death notice is short, typically 40 to 100 words, and sticks to name, age, date of death, and service times. It’s a public announcement. Papers charge less for it, and some funeral homes include a basic notice in their service package.
A full obituary runs longer, often 200 to 500 words or more, and carries the biographical narrative, survivor list, and personal touches the planning form is designed to feed. Pricing is by the word, line, or column inch. A small community paper might charge a few dollars per line; a major metro daily can run several hundred dollars for a modest notice, with more for photos, borders, or multi-day runs. If budget is tight, you can trim the form’s output into a death notice for the paper and post the full version on a free online memorial site.
Submitting the Form for Publication
Once the family has reviewed the draft, submission generally involves verification, formatting, and payment.
Verification
Most newspapers require the death to be confirmed by an official source, usually the funeral home, crematory, or body-donation program handling arrangements, before they’ll run anything. This blocks fraudulent or malicious obituaries. If no funeral home is involved, expect to provide a death certificate. When a funeral home is handling arrangements, confirm with them that verification has been sent before you assume the paper is ready to publish.
Photo and Formatting
If you’re including a photograph, newspapers generally want a high-resolution JPG, at least 150 DPI, showing only the deceased. Crop out other people before you upload. Many papers also sell formatting add-ons such as borders, colored backgrounds, or emblems like a military insignia or a religious symbol.
Proofing and Payment
After submission, the paper sends a proof showing how the obituary will appear in the layout. Read it slowly for typos, missing names, and wrong dates. Correcting a proof is easy; correcting a printed edition is not. Online obituaries can usually be edited after the fact; print cannot. The paper calculates the fee based on word count, photo, and run length, then takes payment before finalizing placement. Keep the receipt, which lists the scheduled run dates for both print and digital.
After the Obituary Runs
Publishing is one step in a longer administrative list.
- Funeral homes generally report the death to the Social Security Administration. If no funeral home is involved, call the SSA directly with the person’s name, Social Security number, date of birth, and date of death.4Social Security Administration. What to Do When Someone Dies
- Send a copy of the death certificate to each of the three major credit bureaus and request a deceased alert on the credit reports.3Internal Revenue Service. Identity Theft Guide for Individuals
- Order several extra copies of the printed edition. They work as keepsakes and as informal documentation for insurance claims, estate matters, or veterans benefits applications where proof of death may be requested alongside a certified death certificate.
- If you spot an error after publication, call the obituary department right away. Online versions can usually be updated; print corrections may require a follow-up notice in a later edition.
Keep the completed form in your permanent files even after the obituary has run. It’s a consolidated record of names, dates, and family relationships that will be useful for estate settlement, genealogical research, and future memorial tributes.