How to preplan a funeral

Preplanning and prepaying are two different things. Most of the value is in the first one, and it is free.

Preplanning is writing down what you want and telling the person who will be asked. Prepaying is giving a company money years in advance. You can do the first without ever doing the second, and for many families that is the right answer.

Start with the wishes. Deal with the money last, if at all.

Why the order matters

The decision people describe as the worst is not the cost. It is being asked to make expensive, irreversible choices within hours of a death, with no information and no time.

Someone dies at home. Emergency responders ask which funeral home to call. The family picks one from a phone, right there in the room. Everything after that, the package, the casket, the schedule, the bill, flows from a choice made in ninety seconds by people who have never done this before.

A page of decisions made calmly, months earlier, removes that. It is worth more than any amount of prepayment, and it costs nothing.

Step one: the decisions, on one page

Write down the answers to these. Do not research them first, your first instinct is usually your real answer.

Disposition. Burial, cremation, direct cremation, green or natural burial, donation to science, or undecided. Undecided is an acceptable answer to write down, because it tells your family the question is open rather than lost.

Service. A service with the body present, a graveside service only, a memorial later, or nothing. Whether you want a viewing.

Where the remains go. A cemetery, a niche, scattered somewhere specific, kept by someone, or no preference.

Who decides. The person you want making the calls. See the next section, this one has legal weight.

What you do not want. Often easier to answer, and just as useful. Embalming, an open casket, a religious service, expensive flowers, a particular person speaking.

That is the page. Twenty minutes. Give a copy to the person named on it.

Step two: name the person, properly

This is the step that turns preferences into instructions.

Most states have a statutory order of who controls the disposition of remains, and the top of the list is usually a person the deceased named in writing. Texas heads its priority list with "the person designated in a written instrument signed by the decedent," and publishes an appointment form whose operative sentence reads: "All decisions made by my agent with respect to the disposition of my remains, including cremation, shall be binding."

If you name nobody, the default order applies, commonly spouse, then adult children, then parents, then siblings. If your closest relationship is not the one the statute ranks first, that matters a great deal.

Two things follow.

Writing wishes in your will is not enough on its own. The will is often not read until after the funeral. The instruction may be legally valid and still arrive too late to do anything.

Even a paid contract can be overridden by the person with the right of disposition. Ohio requires preneed contracts to say so in boldface: the person holding that right "will have the right to make funeral arrangements inconsistent with the arrangements set forth in this contract."

So the sequence is: decide, write it in your state's designation form, tell that person, and make sure they know where the paperwork is.

Step three: the itemized list you are entitled to

When you are ready to talk to a funeral home, for planning, not for buying, the FTC Funeral Rule is on your side, and it applies to preplanning conversations.

The FTC's compliance guidance states that "the Rule's requirements apply to both pre-need and at-need funeral arrangements," and that a provider "must give out a General Price List in all pre-need situations."

It also applies wherever the conversation happens, the rule covers a price discussion "whether the discussion takes place in the funeral home or elsewhere." A kitchen table, a seminar, a retirement community dining room. And it covers salespeople who sell contracts on a funeral home's behalf without providing the services themselves.

What the General Price List must itemize. Prices for each of these, if offered:

• Forwarding remains to another funeral home
• Receiving remains from another funeral home
• Direct cremation, including a separate price where you provide the container
• Immediate burial, including a separate price where you provide the casket
• Transfer of remains to the funeral home
• Embalming
• Other preparation of the body
• Use of facilities and staff for viewing
• Use of facilities and staff for a funeral ceremony
• Use of facilities and staff for a memorial service
• Use of equipment and staff for a graveside service
• Hearse
• Limousine

Plus casket prices, outer burial container prices, and the basic services fee.

Two rights worth knowing before any conversation:

You may choose only the items you want. That sentence is mandated language on the price list itself.

The printed list is yours to keep. Take three of them and compare at home.

On embalming, the mandated wording is precise: "Except in certain special cases, embalming is not required by law." Not never, there are carve-outs, and certain arrangements such as a viewing may require it. But you generally have the right to choose an arrangement that does not, such as direct cremation or immediate burial.

On vaults, the required disclosure separates law from cemetery rule: "In most areas of the country, state or local law does not require that you buy a container to surround the casket in the grave. However, many cemeteries require that you have such a container."

One caution about scope. The Funeral Rule does not apply to "cemeteries that lack an on-site funeral home." Cemetery charges, the plot, opening and closing, the marker, are a separate bill from a separate business, and you have to ask for that schedule separately.

Step four: only now, the money

Having done the first three steps, you have a plan and have spent nothing. The funding question is genuinely separate, and there are three honest answers.

Do nothing. Your family pays at the time, from the estate or from insurance. The plan you wrote still does its job.

Set money aside yourself. A dedicated account, with a payable-on-death designation to whoever will be arranging things. It stays yours, it stays liquid, it moves when you move, and no company can fail with it.

Prepay a funeral home. This buys a price lock and hands over control of the money. It is the right answer in some situations, particularly Medicaid spend-down, where an irrevocable contract is often the point, and it carries real risks that belong in their own conversation.

If you are considering the third, the questions to ask are specific enough that we put them on their own page: whether the contract is guaranteed or not, whether it is trust-funded or insurance-funded, what percentage of your money is actually deposited, what the transfer fee is if you move, and what your state's recovery fund actually pays if the business fails.

There is no urgency to that decision. There is some urgency to steps one and two, because they are the ones that stop a family choosing a funeral home from a phone while standing in a room with a body.

What good looks like

• One page of decisions, written by you.
• Your state's designation form, signed, naming the person who decides.
• Three General Price Lists in a folder, so somebody can compare without starting from nothing.
• The cemetery's current fee schedule, if a cemetery is involved.
• One adult who knows all of it exists and where it lives.

That last item is the one that fails most often. Plans get written and then stored somewhere nobody thinks to look. A plan in a storage unit is not a plan.

Tell one person. Show them the folder. Two minutes, once.

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Before the Funeral Home has the one-page wishes sheet to hand to a funeral home, twelve questions to take with you, and a two-column sheet for comparing two price lists. See what is inside