Talk to a funeral director and they’ll tell you that people’s funeral arrangements are becoming more and more diverse.
We see this too – we've heard about Viking funerals, back-garden burials, superhero and punk-rock themed ceremonies. There is also an increasing trend of people making mementoes out of people’s ashes, known as ‘cremorials’ – your loved ones ashes can be used in sculptures, mixed with paint to create a piece of art, or even turned into jewellery.
Some of these ideas have come from the deceased; others from their relatives. But this widening choice of options is making funeral arrangements more contentious. Families often disagree about what the deceased ‘would have wanted’ – cremation or burial, humanist or religious, private or larger-scale, traditional or idiosyncratic.
And different parts of the family – especially in blended families – may also disagree about how they themselves want to remember the person. Disputes are commonplace – arguments breaking out at funerals are not confined to soap opera scenes, nor are ongoing legal battles about what happens to someone’s ashes.
In general, the best way to avoid such disputes is for people to plan ahead before their death. Some people like to design their own funerals, specifying what they want in their Will or another document. And with arrangements such as leaving your body to medical science, you need to make arrangements yourself before your death with a university which has an anatomy department.
Others believe that funeral and other death arrangements are more about the wishes of surviving loved ones, and leave it to them to decide these. Since 2016, it’s been possible to specify in your Will or an ‘Arrangements on Death Declaration’ who you want to take charge of your funeral arrangements.
Another effective way to head off or settle future disputes is to state in your Will that your executors should have final say over the funeral and what happens to your remains.
If you don’t specify who gets the final say, the law will make the decision for you. There’s a specified order for this – with spouses, civil partners, and a partner you’ve been living with for six months all coming above your children in the pecking order of who can choose the arrangements.
Therefore, if, for example, it’s important to you and your children that they decide what happens, you need to put this in a Will or Arrangements on Death Declaration.
