--- title: "Legacy Questions for Parents: 32 to Choose From, and Why You Should Ask Five" description: "Life-story questions collect the events. Legacy questions ask what he made of them. Thirty-two to pick from, in four groups, with the follow-up that gets the second half of the answer." author: "The Glow Editors" category: "A Life, Told" date: 2026-10-22T15:45:03.386Z canonical: "https://tryglow.ai/blog/legacy-questions-for-parents-what-do-you-want-your-children-to-know" --- # Legacy Questions for Parents: 32 to Choose From, and Why You Should Ask Five ![grayscale photo of woman in black dress holding child in black shirt](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1624003652795-a9f73df756fa?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w4OTQwNjJ8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxfHxMZWdhY3klMjBRdWVzdGlvbnMlMjBmb3IlMjBQYXJlbnRzJTIwbGVnYWN5JTIwcXVlc3Rpb25zJTIwcGFyZW50fGVufDF8MHx8fDE3OTE4MDA2MzJ8MA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=75&w=1200&auto=format) > Life-story questions collect the events. Legacy questions ask what he made of them. Thirty-two to pick from, in four groups, with the follow-up that gets the second half of the answer. Somewhere on a motorway in about 1998, your father said he had never once been sorry he walked away from the family business. You were fourteen, the radio was on, and you did not ask him why. That sentence has stayed with you for twenty-five years without its reason attached. A life-story question asks what happened. A legacy question asks what it was for. Thirty-two of them are set out below in four groups, and the instruction that matters most is this: do not ask thirty-two. Choose five, sit down with him, and let him take them wherever he wants to go. If a different one opens up along the way, drop the list and follow that instead. None of this is a will, a letter of wishes or anything a solicitor would recognise. If paperwork is the actual worry, [the difference between a will, a letter of wishes and an ethical will](/letter-of-wishes-vs-will-vs-ethical-will) is worth ten minutes first, and [recording a parent's wishes in their own words](/recording-her-wishes-in-her-own-words-before-you-need-the-paperwork) covers the conversation nobody wants to start. ## Making it a conversation and not an interrogation Pick his hour, not yours. Say clearly what you are doing and why, and say that he can refuse any question without giving a reason. Then ask whether you may record it, and ask on the recording so the answer is kept with the file. If he says no to recording, write instead; a notebook is less intimidating than a phone propped against a mug. Do not sit opposite him. Side by side in the car, on a walk, at the kitchen counter while one of you peels something: these produce longer answers than a chair facing a chair. If he is the sort who answers in three words, [recording a parent who does not want to be recorded](/how-to-record-a-parent-who-doesnt-like-being-recorded) is the practical version of this problem, and [the questions written for fathers](/questions-to-ask-your-dad) tend to start further back. Say at the start that he can stop whenever he likes. It is not a formality. People answer more freely once they know the exit is open. ## What he stood for: eight questions about values - What did your parents believe that you decided not to believe? - What is a rule in this family that nobody ever wrote down? - When did you stand up for something and pay for it? - What do you think money is for? - Who taught you how to behave, and how did they do it? - What would you forgive anybody for, and what would you not? - What is the thing you have changed your mind about most? - What is the most ridiculous thing you have ever taken completely seriously? The follow-up that opens it up: "When did you first realise that?" It asks for a scene rather than a principle, and the scene is what you will want to hear in his voice in thirty years. ## What he worked out the hard way: eight questions about lessons - What is the hardest year you have had, and what got you through it? - What advice did you follow that turned out to be wrong? - What do you know now about being married that nobody told you then? - What did you get wrong as a father, and what would you do differently? - What is a risk you took that worked, and one that did not? - What should I stop worrying about? - What is the best thing anybody ever said to you? - What is something you are very good at that nobody notices? The follow-up that opens it up: "What did that cost you?" Lessons given without their price sound like fridge magnets. The cost is the part that makes the answer true. ## What he hopes happens to you: eight questions about the people coming after - What do you hope is different for my children than it was for me? - What do you want us to do on the days when it is going badly? - What should we not inherit from this family? - Which of us are you least worried about, and why? - What is a tradition you would be sorry to see dropped? - What do you want the grandchildren to know about you that they are too young to understand now? - What do you hope we argue about, and what do you hope we never do? - If you could leave us one sentence on the kitchen wall, what would it say? The follow-up that opens it up: "Who in the family are you thinking of when you say that?" Hopes are almost always addressed to one specific person, and naming them turns a platitude into a message. ## What he wants left behind: eight questions about legacy - What do you want said about you, and by whom? - Is there anything you want recorded exactly as you say it, word for word? - What is in this house that has a story, and who should end up with it? - Who should we thank on your behalf when you are not here to do it? - What have you never told us that we ought to know? - What do you want us to do with your things, as opposed to what the will says? - Is there anybody you would like to put right with, and would you like help doing it? - What song should be playing, and who will be furious about the choice? The follow-up that opens it up: "Shall we write that one down properly?" Some answers in this group are instructions rather than memories. Treat them as instructions, and read them back to him so he can correct the wording. ## What palliative care learned by asking one question Hospices have been working on this longer than anybody, and the most instructive thing in that literature is how small the successful versions are. A rural hospice in Canada tested the Patient Dignity Question, which is a single sentence put to a dying person: what do I need to know about you as a person to give you the best care possible. Pamela McDermott's account of the study, published in Canadian Family Physician in 2019, reports that the whole process with nineteen patients took [about an hour each, interview and typing and editing together](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6853356/). The answer was typed up, read back, corrected by the patient, and then theirs to hand on. The fuller version, Dignity Therapy, uses a set list of about ten questions given to the person in advance so they can think before anybody sits down. A Dutch translation of that protocol was tested with nursing-home residents and [published in BMC Geriatrics in 2025](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11702223), and the questions in it are close cousins of the ones above: what you most want your family to know, the roles that mattered, what is still unsaid, and what you would say to prepare the people you love for the future. Two practices are worth stealing from both. Send the questions ahead rather than springing them. And read the result back to him and let him change it, because the version he has approved is the one the rest of the family will be able to trust. One more thing from that Dutch study deserves saying plainly. Of the twelve residents who took part, one withdrew after reading her own document. Seeing your life summarised on a page is not uniformly comforting, and a family doing this at the kitchen table should assume the same thing can happen and make it easy to stop. ## Thirty-two questions is a list. One question is a conversation. Most pages on this subject, and most ethical-will worksheets, hand over a long inventory of prompts. We publish thirty-two above for the same reason everyone does: you need somewhere to choose from. But the list is the least important thing on this page, and treating it as the product is the mistake that makes these conversations go flat. Look at what actually works in the clinical versions. The hospice intervention that proved easiest to run is one sentence. The fuller protocol is ten questions, sent in advance, delivered once. Nobody designed a thirty-two-question sitting, because nobody would survive it. A long list produces a dutiful parent working through an agenda, and dutiful answers are worthless; they are the answers he thinks you want. So our view is that the real skill here is not question selection, it is the follow-up and the silence after it. Ask one thing, then say nothing for an uncomfortable length of time. The second half of the answer, the half that arrives after the pause, is almost always the part you will keep. Where this is wrong: if he is very ill, or if his memory is slipping, or if this is the only visit you will get this year, then the long list earns its place and you should use it without guilt. Ask the things only he can answer first. Leave the charming ones for a visit that may not happen. ## If he died before anybody asked him Most people meet a page like this too late. The questions still work; they just go to other people. His brother knows what he was like at twenty. His oldest friend knows what he was frightened of. A colleague knows what he was like on a bad day at work, which is a side of a parent children rarely see. Ask each of them the same two things: what was he like at the age I am now, and what did he say about us when we were not in the room. Then write down who told you which story. In twenty years the attribution will matter as much as the story does. ## What to do with what he tells you That evening, while it is fresh, do three small things. Rename the recording so it says who, when and roughly what. Copy it somewhere that is not the phone it was made on. Write three lines of notes: the names he mentioned, the bits you did not follow, and the single thread to pull next time. Then decide, with him, who gets to hear it. Some of these answers are for everybody and some are for one person. If he wants something written rather than spoken, [a legacy letter](/how-to-write-a-legacy-letter-to-your-children) is the same material in a form he controls completely. Glow keeps real recordings as they were made, with consent and with the family deciding who hears them, and it will never synthesise a voice or put a sentence in his mouth that he did not say. ## What adult children ask about legacy questions ### How is this different from a life-story interview? A life-story interview collects the events: where he was born, which jobs, which houses, in roughly that order. A legacy question asks what he made of it and what he wants carried forward. The two go well together, but the legacy ones are harder to ask cold, so most families do the life story first. ### How many should I ask in one sitting? Five, and then stop while he is still enjoying it. The clinical versions of this work use one question or about ten, never thirty. A short sitting you both liked produces a second sitting; an exhausting one does not. ### What if he gets upset? Stop, say sorry plainly, and do not reach for another question to cover the silence. Say the subject is closed unless he reopens it. Being upset is not the same as being harmed, and he is allowed to decide which it was. ### Do these answers count as a will? No. Nothing recorded in a conversation like this governs money, property or who gets what, and treating it as though it does can cause a fight later. For anything legally binding, a solicitor or estate attorney is the right call, and the rules differ by country. ## FAQ ### How is this different from a life-story interview? A life-story interview collects the events: where he was born, which jobs, which houses, in roughly that order. A legacy question asks what he made of it and what he wants carried forward. The two go well together, but the legacy ones are harder to ask cold, so most families do the life story first. ### How many should I ask in one sitting? Five, and then stop while he is still enjoying it. The clinical versions of this work use one question or about ten, never thirty. A short sitting you both liked produces a second sitting; an exhausting one does not. ### What if he gets upset? Stop, say sorry plainly, and do not reach for another question to cover the silence. Say the subject is closed unless he reopens it. Being upset is not the same as being harmed, and he is allowed to decide which it was. ### Do these answers count as a will? No. Nothing recorded in a conversation like this governs money, property or who gets what, and treating it as though it does can cause a fight later. For anything legally binding, a solicitor or estate attorney is the right call, and the rules differ by country. --- Source: https://tryglow.ai/blog/legacy-questions-for-parents-what-do-you-want-your-children-to-know