Recording funeral wishes

Funeral wishes are practical. Burial or cremation, the place, the music, who speaks, and who does not have to guess on the day itself. In the life file that choice is written in ordinary words. Not yet chosen is a valid answer. A family that has to guess between burial and cremation loses time on a day that is already full. Write the place with a name, not with a mood. Write the music with a title, if it matters. And write the name of the funeral director if one has already been chosen, with a telephone number someone can call without searching.

That text is a wish. It is not a clause an heir can enforce for as long as it stands only in the life file. No one uses this file to enforce a song or a cemetery. The people who arrange the funeral read the wish so they do not have to guess. They are not bound by it as they would be by an agreement. Say that in the file, in one sentence with the wish: this is a wish, not an instruction. Then a reader does not take the text for something firmer than it is. A wish that is read as an order creates friction on a day that does not ask for it.

It becomes different if a will really contains the wish. Then the text stands in the last will (uiterste wil), not only in a note. The distinction is where you find it. If the sentence lies only in the life file, it is a wish and not an enforceable clause. If the same sentence lies in the will, it is a provision in that deed, and the notary assesses what its scope is. This piece does not say that every funeral sentence in a will is enforceable. It only says that the note and the deed are not the same document. Do not copy the wish into a homemade clause and call that a will.

The costs of the funeral are a different subject from the wish. An invoice is a debt in the estate only once you record it with an amount and a source. The wish itself has no price in the life file. Do not put a budget with the wish if that budget is nowhere on paper. After the death the invoice goes with the debts, with the date of that invoice. The estate inventory keeps its valuation on the date of death. Do not mix those moments up. The choice of music does not belong in the description of the estate inventory, and the invoice does not belong with the wish as if they were the same line.

A funeral wish in the life file says what someone wanted: burial or cremation, the place, the music, and who does not have to guess. As long as that text stands only there, it is a wish and not an enforceable clause. Only if a will really contains the wish as a last will (uiterste wil) does it lie in a deed, and even then the notary assesses the scope. This piece enforces no funeral and names no rate or exemption. This is not legal advice and not tax advice. How the funeral is arranged in a particular case is done by the surviving relatives, with the wish in hand.