I would keep the church friends separate @GROCKLE. Perhaps buy in some nice cakes for them to enjoy after the service with a cup of tea. if they haven’t seen your sister for years they may well be embarrassed to be invited to a meal, but a nice slice of cake after the service would be very standard for this sort of thing and much appreciated.
Funeral preparation checklist
- Thread starter GROCKLE
- Start date
When mum passed away we had a service in the church followed by sandwiches and cake in the church hall. You would have to pay to use the church hall, but it is not usually very expensive. The vicar may know of someone in the church who would provide tea/sandwiches/cake at a very reasonable cost. If asked, the vicar would also announce the funeral in the notices so that church friends would know.
I took some of mums photo albums to the wake to give people something to do and talk about.
I took some of mums photo albums to the wake to give people something to do and talk about.
I just revamped a Photo Album from 2017, putting in more names, relationship and comments than before where there were mainly pictures. It has arrived at my sister's care home, if nothing else it will help carers and visitors be able to talk about the people in the pictures with my sister, at least I hope this is the case.
Wrap-up
When I started my buildup of checklist questions in this forum, I was trying to find ways to simply my duties for when the inevitable happened.My sister has now, with 84 and 4-5 years of dementia, passed away in the company of trusted friends and without pain. My power of attorney has been rescinded, and all the paperwork apart from the Death Certificate, Will and Deeds have, in my case, been reduced to a 3 Sheet Excel spreadsheet based, on this Probate Inventory Example which I modified for my purposes* and in the hands of the solicitors executing the will.
The 3 sheets (Probate Inventory, Probate Assets, Probate Liabilities) in the Inventory contain all the information and addresses that they need. The meeting took less than 30 minutes and I see that the "Tell us once" has been activated and various utilities and so are now billed to the solicitors. The solicitor to whom I sent the Excel sheets before the meeting has had to ask virtually no questions about the case. They said they had all the information they required.
*You will need to modify not just the US terminology, $ but also the Paper Print size to A4.
Whether I have made the executors' life easy and will still be charged a standard rate I do not know but it was a great relief for me.
But suddenly, there is a multiple emptiness, not just because of missing a sister, but also being relieved of the duties of caring for her. The pressure is off all around, but I do eventually still have her house to sell to complete the story. With this Inventory, you will also see more or less the value of the estate.
Summing up, I would highly recommend simplifying the assets and preparing something like the Probate Inventory Example before the person passes away. It certainly helped me. Hope this helps someone else.
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Good thing I made my Probate Inventory list, Executors are not infallible!👆
Moving on now, my sister passed away back in July, the Executors (Professionals) of the will have had all the documents in their hands a couple of months now, Then I recently received a list of the value of the estate and how much the investment tax could be. Despite the fact I had entered the refund from the care home in my "Probate Inventory List" as I call it, which I had given to them, these 1400+ pounds were missing. They had been paid to the executors already back in July. There were a few other items which were not quite correct, like a 10k difference on the official house evaluation. But having a copy of my "PIL" which I had given them it was easy to sort out.The motto in my story is that when the person you are the PoA for passes away, you no longer have access to all financial assets, and it is easy to forget the smaller items, and you have no way to check. It's no longer your business. But, by having my "PIL" to hand, I knew already more or less what the value of the estate would be and could easily double-check the values from the executors.
It certainly helped me, professional executors are not infallible. 🤷♂️
Sorry, I had meant to write Inheritance Tax - but too late to correct the edit now.
