Chapter 26: Easing the Burden on Your Family
There's a Lot You Can Do to Help--Now

When the renowned baseball player Ted Williams died in 2002, the acclaim over his career was somewhat shadowed by the ugly legal battle over what would happen to his remains. One of his children insisted that Williams wanted to be cremated, while another contended that the old slugger had decided to have his body cryogenically preserved.

Although few such conflicts become so bizarre, or so public, far too many children and other survivors often face the agonizing question of deciding what kind of funeral arrangements mom or dad would have wanted. This chapter gives you some tips on how to make things easier for your family in the days and weeks after your death.

Where will mom be buried? How much should we spend on the funeral? Where are the important records – bank accounts, safe deposit boxes, etc. – needed to make sense of her affairs after she’s gone? What insurance policies are affected? Which friends and relatives need to be informed, and how can they be reached?

Putting together the threads of anyone else’s life after they’re gone is hard enough – but having to do so when you’re suffering from the grief over a loved one’s departure, and while maintaining your own family and work responsibilities, can be overwhelming.

So once the hard part of your estate planning – writing a will, setting up a trust, tax planning, and so on – is done, it’s vital to take a little more time to ease the burden on your family by providing them with clear final instructions about how to handle the myriad loose ends during the trying months after your departure.