Music and speakers

Wishes for music and for who speaks, you write short and concrete. The title of a piece of music, the name of a speaker, and whether you want a short speech or no speeches. Two lines are often enough. A running order for a whole afternoon becomes an instruction, and that is not what this note is for. Name a song by the title someone can look up, not by a mood. Name a speaker by name, with a telephone number if that person has to be called. If you do not want to make a choice yourself, write that the family chooses the music. An empty line that is honest is better than a list you only half mean. Keep it to what someone else can carry out without you.

These wishes do not decide who inherits. A speaker is not an heir because that person speaks. A child who does not speak does not stop being a child. Keep the funeral lines apart from every sentence about the house, the accounts or the children. Whoever reads the file later should not find those two subjects in one paragraph. The life file appoints no executor here. The person who chooses the music arranges a song, not the estate. Write that with it if need be, in one calm sentence, so that a family member does not make the role larger than it is. The list remains a help for the day of the funeral and nothing further. A name on this list is a role for that day.

Do not promise that the family can enforce the music or the speaker. Funeral wishes in a life file are wishes. They bind only if a valid will or a valid codicil truly covers them, and even then only within the limits of the law. These typed lines are not that document. A codicil has its own, strictly handwritten form. Refer to the place where it can be found if the wish is also there, and leave it at that reference. Ervazo stores the titles and the names and does not send them to a funeral director or a notary. If you change a song, you replace the title. Two contradictory titles leave the family guessing after all, and that is what the short list is meant to prevent.

A life file is a note for later. It is not a will, not a medical instruction and not advice. Music and speakers are concrete wishes for one day. They appoint no heir and no executor. That appointment belongs in a notarial will. A codicil has its own, strictly handwritten form and a song title is not that form. Ervazo does not send the note to a doctor or a notary. The family can read the lines so they do not have to guess. The lines give no right to a particular song and no right to speak. Keep them short, and keep them apart from everything that is about inheriting.