Pre-Planning
We understand that planning your own funeral is not something that people want to do. For the most part, people don’t think of it at all, or if they do, they don’t think that this preparation is something “I” would have to deal with. The fact of the matter is, however callous it may sound, we will all die, and we will all leave behind families that have to make decisions about how to take care of us at that time. At Williford Funeral Home, we want to ask that you do the following:
- Pre-plan your funeral arrangements and preferably submit them to the funeral home of your choice.
- Pre-fund or construct a plan to pay for the arrangements that you choose.
Pre-Planning
Pre-planning is not an easy step for someone, but there are several things that one must take into account when thinking about that time.
- Constructing a list of family and friends that you would want invited as well as contact information.
- A family history so that a proper death certificate might be constructed
- Type of service you would want (traditional burial, green funeral, or cremation)
- Funeral Necessities (Casket, vault, urn, etc.)
- Nature of the ceremony you want (Music, plans, speakers, poems, etc.)
- Centralization of legal documents (wills, insurance documentation, etc.)
If these choices are made it greatly assists your family from having to choose what you would have wanted at your time of death. Making these choices does not have to be a burden. You do not have to spend any money to plan your services nor do you have to enter an agreement that you have to have these services done at any particular funeral home. The important part is that you make these plans.
Pre-Funding
There are two main ways that you can pre-fund and thus relieve your family with the greatest burden at your time of death: where will the money come from? The greatest relief we see on family’s faces is when we tell them that their loved one had taken care of everything so all that is required is for them to attend and morn as they wish. The two main ways one might pre-fund their funeral is through a Trust or Burial Insurance. In either case you are not binding your money to any single funeral home and the money is not held, controlled, or managed by the funeral home.
Trusts
Revocable
A revocable trust is essentially like a long term savings account that is designated for a particular purpose. You have access to the money that you have placed into an account. The down side of this is that the money is not protected from Medicaid or can be used for other purposes.
Irrevocable
An irrevocable trust is money set aside for a particular purpose and cannot be touched by the state, Medicaid, or your heirs. You designate the purpose of that trust for your burial and that money is transferred to the funeral home at your time of death to pay for the arrangements that you have made. In many situations, Medicaid will step in at the time of death and seize the assets of the one that has passed to pay for the medical services that were given while they were alive. Other times members of the family want to use the money someone set aside for their death for some other purpose. An irrevocable trust does not allow either of these to occur
Burial Insurance
One of the single greatest issues that we hear is that people belief that the life insurance they hold will be used to pay for their death. The problem with this is that life insurance is for the living. This is the type of insurance you take out so that those that you leave behind will be taken care of without you. If you use your life insurance to take care of your burial you do not allow your life insurance to do what it needs to do.
Burial insurance is similar to other insurance policies. It allows someone to select a death benefit and the rate is dependent upon age and health; however, burial insurance has some advantages. First, burial insurance is what we call inflation proof. You can select or pre-plan your funeral and the amount we quote you will be locked in so that if you die two years from now or fifty years from now the value of your policy will pay for the service you selected no matter the new cost of services. Second, burial insurance makes sure that you pay only the length of time and the agreed upon rate from the beginning. If you pre-plan a funeral that will cost 5,000 dollars over ten years and your payments are fifty-five dollars a month, your payments will never last more than that ten years and will never increase; however, you have made sure that that 5,000 policy will pay for a funeral many years ahead of time, no matter if the cost of that funeral is 10,000 or 15,000 dollars in the future. Third, with burial insurance you can pay over one, three, five, seven, or ten years with the security of the policy delivering your benefit at any time as long as you keep the policy active. This means that even if you die two years after establishing the policy, as long as you kept the policy active, the funeral that you pre-arranged will still be paid for. In addition, if you are the parent or grandparent of someone under the age of twenty-one at the time of their death and you hold a burial insurance policy, they will receive a $2,500 death benefit as well. If the mother and father of a child that has passed holds a burial insurance policy, that child will receive up to $5,000 in death benefit.
No matter what plans you make, any monetary decisions or payments cannot be held or controlled by any funeral home, and your plans can be moved to any funeral home at any time upon your request. We want to take care of the families in our community; however, if we can’t take care of your service for whatever reason, allow us to help you make choices that will help your family.
