Should You Use a Funeral Planning Declaration with Your Estate Planning Documents?

Do you want to make things as easy as possible for your loved ones? While it’s an uncomfortable topic to think about your own mortality, an easier way to approach these concepts includes thinking about how you want to help your family members adjust.

Estate planning involves all of the different documents that help to address your care while you’re alive, such as a power of attorney but also what happens to your property after you pass away.

Some of these issues require management after you have passed away, such as moving your case through probate. This process can be long and can extend for many months or even years for very complex estates. There are some urgent pressing matters, however, with regard to your estate plan immediately after you pass away. It is not a good idea to store some of the long-term information, such as your will in the same place that you might keep a document, such as a funeral planning declaration.

A funeral planning declaration is a document that should be easily accessible by key family members immediately after you pass away. It concerns your wishes about whether you would like to be buried or cremated and any other specific instructions that you have. Since this needs to be located very quickly after you pass away, family members or friends should know where to find it so that they can carry out your wishes.

Some of the most critical decisions that are made in the hours or days after you pass away cannot be undone and, therefore, if you have specific wishes about what happens with your body, you need to be sure that you have not only documented this but made sure that that information is accessible to your family members.

Having a relationship with a VA Beach estate planning lawyer is the first step towards ensuring that you have covered all the bases and set your loved ones up to get help when you pass away.