If someone has died
Who has the authority to decide
New York does not leave this to whoever gets there first. There is an order, it is written down, and it decides who signs — which occasionally means the person making the arrangements is not the person paying for them.
It is New York's order, not ours
The list on this page is not a house rule and it is not something a funeral home can arrange around. It applies whichever funeral home a family walks into, it applies whether or not anybody has heard of it, and it does not change because one person got to the telephone first.
Most of the time nobody notices it, because most of the time a family agrees and the person the order names is the person who was going to sign anyway. It matters in the cases where that is not true: a second marriage, adult children scattered across several states, a partner who was never married to them, a friend who did all of the caring and none of the paperwork. In those, the order still decides, and the sooner everybody knows what it says the less of the week goes on it.
It is why one of the questions we ask on the very first call is who you are to the person. So we know at the start whether the law puts the decision in your hands or somebody else's.
New York sets an order of who may decide, beginning with anyone the person appointed in writing. It is worth knowing which of you it puts the decision with, before the meeting rather than during it.
The order, from the top
Read down until you reach somebody who is alive and an adult. That is where the decision sits, and everybody below that line is being consulted rather than asked.
Someone the person appointed in writing
New York lets anyone name an agent for this in advance, in a signed document. If there is one, it comes before everybody below.
The surviving spouse or domestic partner
The children, if they are adults
All of them equally, which is why a family that disagrees is a real problem rather than an awkward one.
The parents
The brothers and sisters, if they are adults
Then further out, by degree of relationship
Grandparents, then a guardian, then whoever has the legal right to the estate.
The person deciding is not necessarily the person paying
The order says who signs. It says nothing at all about who pays, and the two are separate arrangements settled in different conversations.
In practice the bill is often met by somebody the order does not name. A policy can usually be assigned to pay the funeral home directly, which means a family does not have to find the money and wait for the claim. Whether an insurer will do it, and how quickly, varies enormously. Money put aside years ago does the same job, and so does a family putting in what each of them can. None of that moves the authority: whoever the order names is still the person we ask before anything is done, and still the person who signs.
It is worth saying out loud early in the week, because a family that assumes paying and deciding are the same thing tends to find out otherwise at the worst possible moment.
When people at the same level disagree
This is the part of the page nobody wants to need. It happens, it is not common, and pretending we could fix it would only make it last longer.
When people at the same level disagree, we cannot break the tie and we will not take sides. It goes to a court, it takes time, and the person stays in our care meanwhile. It is rare. It is not unheard of.
What happens meanwhile is the ordinary thing, and it does not change while the argument runs.
Nothing is done to a person without authority
Embalming, cosmetic preparation, anything at all beyond keeping somebody safely: we ask, in writing, and a family that declines is not asked again.
Care of the person, always
Refrigeration from the hour of arrival, and one of us present at every transfer.
Before any of it is needed
The cheapest hour anybody spends on this
An hour with a pen, at any age, and then a conversation telling somebody where the paper is. It is the one thing on this page a reader can act on today.
Write down who decides
The cheapest hour anyone ever spends on this is the one where they write down who decides, and tell that person where the paper is. It costs nothing and it prevents the only argument in this trade that no funeral director can settle.
Writing it down
We sit down, go through the same questions we would ask your family, and keep the answers on file. Nothing is paid, nothing is committed, and you can change it whenever you like. It removes about eighty per cent of what makes the arrangement meeting hard, which is a family guessing.
What the person with the authority actually signs
Less than people expect, and none of it about the estate. There is an authority for what is done to the person, and there is the statement of what has been chosen and what each item costs. The itemised statement is yours to keep, and it should match what you were told.
Everything in writing, before anything is agreed
The itemised statement is given to you and gone through in front of you before you sign, and you keep a copy.
If you are reading this before anybody has died
Then you are in the position to make all of the above irrelevant, and it takes an evening.
- Writing it down — Free, here and at any funeral home worth the name.
- Planning ahead — the difference between writing down what you want and paying for it in advance, which are two decisions and only one of them is financial.
- What we need from you — the same questions, asked while somebody still remembers the answers.
If you are not sure the decision is yours to make
It is a better question before the arrangement meeting than during it. Tell us who is in the family and we will tell you where the order puts it.