If you are like most people, you probably have some specific wishes regarding your funeral and the disposition of your remains. You may want to be buried in a coffin with a burial vault in the ground. Or you may want to be cremated and placed in urns on your children’s mantels so you can watch over them and their families.
Do you want a funeral or memorial service? How about visitation and viewing of your body? Do you want a public service, a small private family service or no service at all? Will there be food served after the funeral?
On my Dad’s side of the family, we would often have large extended Slovak family gatherings at funerals. After the funeral mass and trip to the cemetery, we would have the funeral luncheon that was more like a wake. It would not be unheard of to have beer and wine at these luncheons with people visiting or playing cards into the evening.
To make sure that your wishes are going to be followed, the first thing you need to do is get them down on paper. If you have any specific requests, document them.
One of the best ways to document your funeral wishes is to purchase a pre-paid funeral contract. With a pre-paid funeral contract, you can choose the type of service, the visitation that you want, your casket, burial vault or urn, etc.
When purchasing a pre-paid funeral contract, make sure that it is a Medicaid qualifying contract and get the funeral home’s Medicaid certification which is done on Form DHS-8A. If it is Medicaid qualified, the contract would be considered an exempt asset if you had to apply for Medicaid to pay for nursing home care.
If the pre-paid funeral is not Medicaid qualified, the pre-paid funeral would be considered an available resource that you would have to spend down before you could apply for Medicaid to pay for your nursing home care.
You can purchase a burial plot and monument or headstone of your choice. You can have your monument or headstone engraved with everything except for the date of death and placed on your burial plot.
To make things easier for the family and because they had specific wishes, I have had clients who have written out their entire funeral service including readings, songs, verses and prayers. Do you want a full mass or Eucharist or do you want a simpler funeral or memorial service?
Music can be an important part of the funeral and the grieving process. I have seen many families almost come to blows about what songs should be sung and by whom. By documenting your wishes, you can make it easier for the family so they can concentrate on grieving rather than worrying about how many verses of How Great Thou Art should be sung.
Do you want a vocal soloist, a choir or no music at all? Is the soloist going to sing every song from processional to recessional or only one song? I have been to a number of funerals at which the preacher would not allow a family’s music choice because it was not “appropriate”, even though that same music has been sung at other church funerals.
Who do you want to do the singing? Some churches allow only their assigned vocalists. You may have someone in mind. For example, since I do a fair bit of singing, people have asked me if I would sing specific songs at their funeral. They tell me that this request is in their papers for their family.
I have been to funerals where the deceased sang. The deceased had made a recording and the deceased or the family requested that it be played at the funeral.
A funeral is for the survivors. If the preacher will not let your family have music that will comfort them or the vocalist the family wants, the family can go some place else for the funeral.
Another good reason to write down your funeral wishes is that if the family doesn’t like what you requested, they will be mad at you instead of each other. I would rather have my children mad at me after I am gone than at each other for the next thirty years.
One more thing to do to make things easier for the family that a number of my clients have done is to write their own obituary. By writing your own obituary, you can be in control of what gets said to the paper and how you want to be remembered. You are the person who knows you best. If someone else has to write your obituary, it could be a tedious task.
For example, I had an uncle who was a priest and the family wanted to include in the obituary, all of the churches he had served along with the years of that service so that the obituary could be placed in the local paper of each of those parishes. One of my brothers spent the better part of two days gathering up the information and writing the obituary and placing it in all of the papers. Instead of spending all that time preparing the obituary, we all could have spent that time supporting one another.
Most importantly, let your loved ones know that you have written down specific wishes and tell them where the documents can be found. Put them some place logical from which they can be easily retrieved before the funeral.
Do not lock them away in a strong box or bank safety deposit box only to be found weeks after the funeral. I have many times seen the guilt on children’s faces, who, long after the funeral, found out mom or dad’s wishes were not followed.
You have lots of options. Most people want their family proceeding through the grieving process and supporting one another rather than worrying about or fighting over the details of their funeral or the disposal of their remains. Write down your wishes and let your family know where those wishes can be found.
By: Matthew M. Wallace, CPA, JD
Published edited February 20, 2011 in The Times Herald newspaper, Port Huron, Michigan as: Make your final requests known, for everyone’s sake