What Happened to Lantern, and What to Use Instead

Lantern launched in 2018 promising to walk people through everything before and after a death. It's gone: acquired in 2023, then retired, with accounts shut off. lantern.co now lands on a farewell notice.

Plenty of articles and AI answers still recommend it. Here's what actually happened, how to get your documents back if you planned there, and how to rebuild.

Last verified August 24, 2026.

Liz Eddy and Alyssa Ruderman founded Lantern in 2018.^[1] The product was a guided checklist for the two hardest jobs in this space: handling the weeks after someone dies, and planning ahead so your own people won't be lost. Its eventual buyer described it as "the startup looking to ignite a conversation about how to die well."^[1]

It earned its recommendations. That's part of the problem now: those recommendations are still out there, pointing at a product that no longer exists.

In May 2023, Wellthy, a caregiving concierge company, announced it had acquired Lantern alongside a $25.5 million funding round.^[2] The stated plan was integration: folding Lantern's end-of-life planning materials into Wellthy's caregiving concierge, community, and planning services.^[3]

Integration is what acquirers usually say, and sometimes do. What it meant here is that Lantern stopped being a product you could sign up for.

Wellthy retired the product. The notice that now sits at lantern.co is titled "Retiring Lantern." It says Lantern "will be decommissioning on September 1" and that accounts are unavailable "starting September 2."^[3] The notice doesn't name the year, which tells you something about how quietly these endings happen.

As of August 24, 2026, the login is gone and that notice is what's left of the site.

There's a real recovery path, and it runs through Wellthy. The retirement notice says Wellthy's Member Support "is ready to assist you in downloading all of your important documents" and gives support@wellthy.com as the address.^[3] If your care plan or checklists were on Lantern, email them and ask for everything they hold under your account's email address.

Anything you executed on paper is still good. A signed will, advance directive, or power of attorney gets its validity from your state's signing rules, never from the website that helped you draft it. The shutdown changes nothing about a properly executed document.

Then rebuild the working parts: the what-to-do checklist for the weeks after a death, the will template and advance directive builder for planning ahead, and your state guide for the signing rules and deadlines that apply where you live.

Lantern and Cake, two of the most recommended planning platforms of the last decade, have now been acquired and shut down. So judge any replacement, MORTL included, by one test: can you get your plan out of it, onto paper, into your family's hands?

On MORTL, the builders are free to use and the documents export as PDF and Word files you keep. The Folder puts everything where your family can find it. The guidance for the week after a death is free, permanently, with no account required to read it. And the state guides cite the actual statutes, so you can check our work.

A plan that exists only inside an account is a plan that can be acquired. Build yours so it survives the tools that made it.

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Sources: Wellthy's acquisition announcement and its "Retiring Lantern" notice; OPEN MINDS' May 2023 bulletin on the acquisition and funding round. Redirect checks performed directly on lantern.co, August 24, 2026. See our Sources & Methodology.

This article is education. It doesn't replace legal advice. For your state's exact signing rules, start with your state guide.