[miami_fan]

Originally Posted by CU Tiger

It was an eye opener for us when my wife's mom passed away 5 states away. Her then husband who she had been estranged from (unbeknownst to us) wanted nothing to do with it and her only other living child, (my wife's half sister - my wife also had a full brother who died at 27 - who coincidentally was my best friend and how I met my wife)was too strung out to process her mom died....

We literally got a call from the morgue - "what do you want us to do with this body it has to go somewhere. And where do we send the bill to."

Luckily I was never close to MIL because of how she had abused my wife so I was detached and able to process...but had my wife have been forced to make decisions there she could have made some major wrong choices. Hurting her (and thereby me) financially for ...well a while.

That was the impetus for us paying for and arranging all the burial stuff. We have considered the what if we move scenario...in which case Id just donate them through the church or set up a deal with the local funeral home to find a family in need I suppose.

But the deal with "life insurance will pay for that" it takes...a long time to clear life insurance and funeral homes can bu pushy for their money...or in extreme cases can even lien the estate making the insurance clearing even harder to achieve.

For me, if my kids love me enough to be saddened by my passing. I dont want them to have anything else to worry about but their own healing. I almost hope they arent impacted by my ending thats easier for me to think about than to think my inevitable mortality brings pain that Ive tried my damndest to avoid...

I wonder how many of us have been behind the scenes of enough these end of life situations that we can tell the difference between a "good" and a "bad" situation. Despite having a living will, I had never considered what it would be like if I passed and I was estranged from my wife. That is until a family friend who was two weeks away from completing her divorce, had a stroke. Her family was lucky that, despite the acrimony that came with the pending divorce, her husband followed all of her family requests to include when she was taken off of life support. I didn't run around to find out the cost of a funeral until my cousin was in a vehicle accident and died with no life insurance. no savings and no plan of his own.