Repatriation to another country

The consulate decides, and every consulate is different

The destination country's consulate issues the authorisation that lets a person be brought in. What it asks for differs by country and changes without notice, sometimes between one month and the next, and a list that was right last year is not evidence of anything.

The set most of them want looks like this: certified copies of the death certificate, a statement that the person has been embalmed, a statement that the death was not from a notifiable disease, a declaration from the funeral home about what is in the case, the person's passport, and the consulate's own fees. Some want the documents in their own language. Some want them legalised as well as translated. We prepare and submit; the consulate grants or refuses, and that decision is not ours to influence.

The sealed container, and why embalming is not optional here

Most destinations require both embalming and a hermetically sealed metal container, which then travels inside a wooden shipping case. That is the destination country's rule and the airline's, and this is one of the few arrangements where embalming is genuinely not a choice.

It is worth saying that out loud because it sits directly against what the rest of this site says about embalming, which is that it is almost never required. Both are true. The difference is that a journey across a border is governed by whoever is at the other end of it.

Handling at both ends

At this end, the airline's cargo desk, the documents that travel with the case, and the cut-off time before the flight. At the other end, somebody has to be appointed to receive the person and clear them — normally a funeral home in the destination country, which families very often find through relatives rather than through us.

Get that firm's name, address and telephone number early and give them to us. A case arriving at an airport with nobody appointed to collect it is where the long delays happen, and it is the one part of this that a family can prevent on the first day.

Certified copies, and translation

Order more certified copies than you think you need — ten is what we suggest for an ordinary estate and a repatriation is not an ordinary estate. The consulate keeps some. The authorities at the far end want their own. Whoever settles the person's affairs in either country will need several more, and a second order is slower and costs more than the first — there is a page about how many.

Where translation is required it usually has to be done by a translator the consulate will accept, and a translation ordered late is a week lost. Ask us to check that requirement at the beginning rather than when the rest of the file is ready.

Two to three weeks is common, and longer is not rare

That is the honest range. Public holidays at either end stop everything, and a consulate's closure for its own national holiday is not something anybody can work around. Where the death has gone to the Medical Examiner, add that office's timetable to the front of it.

We will tell you every week exactly what it is waiting on and who has it, including when the answer is that nothing has moved. A funeral home that gives a repatriation family a date early is guessing.

If anyone is waiting on a visa, say so on the first day

It changes the order in which everything is done. Sometimes the right answer is to hold the person here and travel together. Sometimes it is to send ahead and have the family follow. Sometimes it means the service happens at the far end without somebody who wanted to be there, and knowing that early is what gives a family the chance to arrange it differently.

Tell us at the first conversation, even if the application has not been made yet. It is the single most useful thing a family in this position can say to a funeral director.