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interesting post! bump to read later!

I know that it's important to have deeds of Graves, in our family that had been a problem - and hard to resolve at the last minute... also, I learned graves can be reused (sounding of the grave?) so families can continue to be buried in a family plot.

Well, I have fleeting knowledge of this stuff, but I do remember watching the 'adults' in my life panicky and fighting over cemetary plots.

It's also important for the families to know where the gravesite is. I had one elderly client, not married, only one stepdaughter, and when he got very ill, he asked me to go pay for his gravesite. He knew which cemetary he wanted to be buried in and the section he liked and he wanted to make sure that would be his final resting place. I took care of it and took a picture to show him in the hospital. His family never knew anything about it until after he was gone. Then I gave them all the paperwork.... Some people don't care about these things. They say when they are gone, they are gone and they don't care. But to others, it is extremely important. Better to find out now what people want to do.

There's another interesting point about pre-planning funerals and all the details. I know one family where after the mother died, the three daughters got into a power play about which funeral home to use. The mother was 90 when she died, the three daughters were in their 70's. One daughter was the executrix, a good choice, she was the sanest and lived close by. She told the hospital which funeral home to take her mother to. A couple of hours later the funeral home called and said that her sister, who lived in the same county, had arranged to take the mother to another funeral home in another town in the county. The executrix called the third sister, who lived 100 miles away. She was the oldest. She called the second funeral home and told them to take the mother back to the first funeral home. Finally, I had to get involved and make sure the mother ended up at the funeral home she had picked out. It is funny now but it wasn't funny then. The mother was from a small farming community. She had never been in a limo in her life and she spent the first day after she died being driven around the county from funeral home to funeral home. It was a mess, the ultimate case of the final sibling rivalry. Never underestimate what people will do. Write everything down.