A free planning resource,
for every family who walks out of your doors.
Your social workers, chaplains, and palliative care teams field the same questions every week. What do we do now. Who do we call first. How do we close the bank account. Vigils is the calm, religion-aware, free workspace your team can hand every grieving family. Including the Estate Next Steps workflow no other free tool offers.
Why hospitals partner with Vigils
What your social work, chaplaincy, and palliative care teams already wish existed.
The Estate Next Steps workflow.
No other free tool gives families this. 40 closure tasks across banks, mortgage, utilities, IRS, DMV, Medicare, Social Security, and life insurance. Auto-populated copy-paste letter templates for ten of the highest-friction tasks. Organized by urgency window so families know what to do this week, this month, and what can wait. This is the long-tail value your team cannot deliver in a discharge handoff.
Religion-aware for every family you serve.
Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, and secular templates and timelines built in, each reviewed for accuracy. Hospital populations are diverse. Vigils does not assume one tradition. Your social worker hands the same link to every family, and the workspace adapts.
Free for every family. Free for your institution.
There is no charge to families, ever. There is no charge to the hospital, ever. No license, no contract, no per-bed fee. We are funded by optional family upgrades, and the core planning workspace stays free for life.
HIPAA-friendly by design.
Your team recommends. Families self-serve. We never need patient data, never receive it, never request it. Because no PHI ever flows through Vigils, HIPAA does not apply to the recommendation. Your social workers, chaplains, and palliative care nurses can hand out the link with no compliance review needed.
How it works
From department meeting to family workspace in under a week.
01
Your team adds Vigils to the family handoff.
Discharge packets, bereavement folders, the social work intake script, the chaplaincy follow-up email. We provide quick-start one-pagers and copy your team can paste into existing materials.
02
Families plan together in a calm shared workspace.
They write the obituary collaboratively. Coordinate the service. Light virtual candles. Build the slideshow. Everything is mobile, no install, works in the hospital lobby on a phone.
03
The Estate Next Steps workflow extends Vigils into the long tail.
After the service, the work that breaks families is the paperwork. Vigils walks them through 40 closure tasks with letter templates, organized by urgency. The grief support your team cannot give in a 20-minute conversation now lives somewhere they can return to for months.
The Estate Next Steps workflow
The work that breaks families happens after the service.
The funeral ends. The casseroles stop coming. And then a 67-year-old surviving spouse opens an inbox of bills, account statements, and forms they have never seen before. This is where most families fall apart, and it is the part your discharge handoff cannot solve.
Vigils gives every family a guided workflow with 40 closure tasks across banks, mortgage, utilities, IRS, DMV, Medicare, Social Security, life insurance, and more. For ten of the highest-friction tasks, we auto-populate copy-paste letter templates with the deceased's name, account number placeholder, and date already in place. Organized by urgency so families know exactly what to do this week, what waits a month, and what can wait longer.
- 40 closure tasks across every category
- Auto-populated letter templates for 10+ tasks
- Organized by urgency window
- Copy-paste, print, or download as PDF
- Saved to the family workspace, returnable for months
Estate Next Steps
Week 1
- Order certified death certificates
- Notify Social Securityletter
- Contact life insuranceletter
Month 1
- Notify mortgage holderletter
- Cancel credit cardsletter
- File for survivor benefits
Months 2-3
- File final tax return
- Close investment accounts
- Transfer vehicle title
Anytime
- Cancel utilitiesletter
- Update beneficiaries
- Close email and social media
Sample preview. Full workflow includes 40 tasks with copy-paste letter templates for banks, mortgage holders, IRS, DMV, Medicare, and more.
Departments that partner well
Where Vigils fits in your hospital today.
Social Work
The most common entry point. Your medical social workers hand the link in the discharge conversation, the bereavement packet, or the post-death follow-up call.
Chaplaincy and Spiritual Care
Religion-aware planning is rare. Your chaplains can recommend Vigils to families across faiths without making a single tradition feel like the default.
Palliative Care
For families anticipating loss, planning ahead is grace. Your palliative care team can introduce Vigils during the dying process, not just after.
Bereavement Programs
Many bereavement programs run group sessions and follow-up calls but lack a take-home tool. Vigils fills that gap with no curriculum overlap.
NICU and PICU Support
The hardest losses. Vigils does not assume an adult death. Memorial pages, obituary templates, and rituals adapt for infant and child loss with care.
Frequently asked
What hospital directors ask us first.
Is Vigils HIPAA-compliant? Do we need a BAA?
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No BAA is required because Vigils never receives patient data. Your team recommends the link. Families sign up and plan independently. Because no PHI flows through the platform on a hospital-initiated basis, HIPAA does not apply to the recommendation. We are happy to walk your privacy office through the architecture.
Does this cost the hospital anything?
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No. There is no license fee, no per-bed fee, no contract. Vigils is free for your institution and free for every family your team supports. We are funded by optional upgrades families choose on their own.
How do we tell our team about it?
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We provide a one-page quick-start for social workers, a recommended discharge-packet insert, and a short script for the conversation. Most teams roll Vigils out in a single department meeting.
What if a family already has a funeral home?
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Vigils complements the funeral home, it does not replace it. The funeral home runs the service. Vigils helps the family write the obituary, coordinate guests, build a memorial page, and handle the long tail of estate paperwork the funeral home does not touch.
Can families use it in the hospital, on a phone, after the death?
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Yes. Mobile-first, no install, works on any device. Families often start in the hospital lobby in the hours after a death, when the questions feel impossible.
How is this different from a printed bereavement packet?
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Printed packets are static and generic. Vigils is a living workspace. The Estate Next Steps workflow alone replaces hours of search-and-call work with auto-populated letter templates. Families also share a single link with relatives, which means your social worker is not the only point of coordination.