PLANNING AHEAD People are doing more to effectively estate plan than ever before. Preparing a will is the standard thing people think about, but many are broadening their estate plans to include: financial and tax planning, life insurance, RRIF's and annuities, education savings plans for their children or grandchildren, gifting, and even buying a cemetery plot. Increasingly, people are considering funeral pre-payment as a responsible part of effective estate planning. WHAT IS A FUNERAL FOR? A funeral is one way for survivors to pay tribute to the life of the person who has died. Increasingly people are using the term "a celebration of life." A funeral is also a time to say goodbye, and a ritual or ceremony which helps to begin the process of working out grief. It can also be an important gathering of family and friends, often to reminisce and remember good times and precious moments with the person. It is also a time to offer consolation and support to family members and others experiencing bereavement. WHERE DO WE BEGIN? When you decide that you want to pre-plan a funeral for yourself or someone you may be responsible for, the first thing you should do is talk through what kind of funeral you want. Will you choose burial or cremation? Where will the service be held? Who will officiate? What type of casket do you want? Some people think that by purchasing a burial plot in a cemetery, in advance, that they have pre-arranged their funeral. As cemetery land gets more scarce in urban areas, and therefore more expensive, we encourage people to consider making cemetery arrangements in advance, and we can offer you some advice in this regard. But this really only deals with one aspect of your final disposition, and all of the other funeral decisions need to be made. One of the most important things to strive for is coming to a consensus about the kind of funeral that people find meaningful. If organizing the funeral is left until the death occurs, it is often very stressful if family members have different ideas about such fundamental issues such as burial, cremation, entombment, religious vs. secular services, or the type and expense level of the casket. Often, people who are pre-planning their own funerals have strong ideas about what they want. They sometimes forget to talk to their family or loved ones about what kind of funeral or tribute would be helpful to them at the time of death. An old adage, worth remembering, is that funerals are for the living. THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSENSUS Not having consensus within a family about the kind of funeral you are pre-planning can often lead to conflict later on. If the wishes of the deceased were carried out, but the family did not have the kind of funeral they felt they needed or wanted, it can lead to guilt, resentment or conflict. Similarly, not respecting the wishes of the deceased person can bring about these kinds of feelings too. Ideally, getting family and loved ones to agree on the type of funeral that everyone wants, is the objective. HARD TO TALK ABOUT Of course, just getting people to talk about funeral pre-planning can be a problem. Many people find it an awkward subject to raise, and many people say: "I don't want to talk about it" or "I don't even want to think about it." Talking about funerals is something that our culture has not encouraged. Perhaps it is because it is a sad occasion, and all of us would much rather focus on happier things. Our death-denying culture steers us away from wanting to think about funerals in advance. And yet, there are about 2% of the adult public in Ontario who have prepaid their funerals, with almost $1 billion in prepaid funeral trust funds under administration. This number is growing rapidly. Click here to fill out our inquiry form.