The Funeral Wishes Module
Disposition and service preferences recorded so the family doesn't have to guess during grief — burial or cremation, any pre-paid arrangement, the form of the service, obituary guidance, and a personal note.
Where this Module fits
E-05 Module 5 of 9 in the Estate area — step 4 of 4 on the dependency ladder (System → At-Home → Financial → Estate).
Opens the unspoken-intentions pair — wishes that must above all be findable.
Adds to The Secure Guide: Disposition preferences, pre-paid arrangements, service preferences, obituary guidance.
Adds to The Family Guide: The summary — and call the pre-paid provider before any other arrangements.
Every Module adds one section to each guide — that is how the two guides assemble as you work. See what you're building.
Text file — the flexible one. Use it as-is, paste it into a spreadsheet, open it in any editor, or paste it into an AI tool to reshape the blank form to fit your family: rename a field, add a row, drop one you don't need.
Print / PDF — the ready-to-use one. Print it and fill it in by hand, or choose Save as PDF and complete it in your own offline PDF app. Either way it stays with you — the finished Secure Guide template goes inside your Vault.
One rule: only ever give an AI tool the blank template. Never paste your real information — passwords, account numbers, anything you'd keep secret — into an AI tool, an online service, or anywhere outside your own Vault. Customizing an empty form is fine; filling it in happens privately, offline. That's the same rule this site follows: nothing sensitive ever leaves your hands.
Secure Guide Starter Template — Funeral Wishes
This template belongs in The Secure Guide, stored within The Vault. One entry per person — each adult's wishes get their own record, even when they were written in the same conversation. Update whenever preferences or pre-paid arrangements change.
This Module is unique in the FIRM System: it carries no security requirement. No one benefits from stealing a preference about music or flowers. What these pages require is simpler and more important — they must be found. The decisions a family makes in the first twenty-four to seventy-two hours are numerous and time-pressured; the family that finds a clear, current record makes them with confidence, and the family that finds nothing makes them from guesswork. Recording what does not exist counts too: a “no pre-paid arrangement” entry spares a search for a contract that was never signed.
If a pre-paid arrangement exists, discoverability is the whole point — a contract found after arrangements have already been made elsewhere creates more complexity, not less. And one quiet discipline belongs with the obituary: it is a public release of names, dates, and places, and claims sometimes follow it — an invoice for the deceased, an arrangement that was never made. Anything that arrives because of the obituary is routed through the executor and checked against this record. The documentation here is exactly what lets the family recognize a claim that does not match.
| Decision | Preference | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Burial, cremation, or alternative | ||
| If burial: cemetery or location preference | ||
| If cremation: ashes preference | ||
| Pre-paid arrangement in place | Yes / No |
| Provider | Service Covered | Policy / Contract Number | Contact | Document Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Element | Preference |
|---|---|
| Type of service (religious / secular / celebration of life / private / none) | |
| Preferred location | |
| Officiant preference (clergy, celebrant, family member, none) | |
| Music preferences | |
| Readings or speakers | |
| Flowers or charitable donations in lieu of flowers | |
| Attendance preference (public / family only / graveside only) | |
| Livestream or recording | |
Key life events to include, people to acknowledge, organizations or affiliations to mention, anything to omit, and a draft obituary or notes.
Space for a personal message, written by the planner in their own voice.
Family Guide Starter Template — Funeral Wishes
This template belongs in The Family Guide. It summarizes the wishes and the first call to make.
In the matching Secure Guide section: disposition preferences, pre-paid arrangements, service preferences, obituary guidance.
Nothing in this Module is secret — its entire job is to be findable. The full record sits in The Secure Guide; if the Vault is briefly out of reach, the summary on this page is enough to act on.
A summary of disposition preference, service preference, whether a pre-paid arrangement exists (provider and contact), and burial location or ashes preference. Full details are in The Secure Guide.
Funeral home or provider (name, phone). If a pre-paid arrangement is in place, contact the provider before making any other arrangements.
Notes for the obituary are in The Secure Guide; key items to include are summarized here.
Optional personal message, written by the planner.
Anything this page's reader should know that the sections above didn't ask for — the exceptions, the house quirks, the thing you would say out loud while handing this page over.
For more information on how to use these templates, see The Recoverable Family book.
Worked example — Frank's family
When Frank's father died there were no instructions — just fragments the family assembled from memory: a hymn someone recalled him liking, a comment about the cemetery made years earlier. The decisions got made, and Frank still wonders about two of them. He and Sarah wrote their own pages one ordinary Sunday in June — two hours, unexpectedly clarifying — so the kids inherit answers instead of guesses.
All details are fictional and illustrative. The assembled example guides live at the example Secure Guide and the example Family Guide.
Secure Guide — Frank's entry
The Funeral Wishes section of the Mercers' Secure Guide — one record per person, both reviewed together in June 2026:
| Decision | Preference | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Burial, cremation, or alternative | Frank: cremation. Sarah: cremation | Decided together, June 2026 |
| If burial: cemetery or location preference | n/a | — |
| If cremation: ashes preference | Frank: the lake at the state park — the family fishing spot. Sarah: with Frank's, same place, one trip | The kids know the spot |
| Pre-paid arrangement in place | No — reviewed and decided against for now | Recorded so nobody searches for a contract that doesn't exist; revisit at 60 |
| Provider | Service Covered | Policy / Contract Number | Contact | Document Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| None | — | — | — | This row is deliberate: any invoice or claim that a pre-paid plan exists does not match our records — route it to the executor |
| Element | Preference |
|---|---|
| Type of service | Simple service at Westvale Community Church, then a gathering with food and stories — informal on purpose (both of us) |
| Preferred location | Westvale Community Church; gathering at the house or the park pavilion |
| Officiant preference | Pastor Jim Hollis, if he is able — he married us |
| Music preferences | Sarah: the two hymns on the card in this folder. Frank: whatever the family wants, plus the one song Lily will recognize when she sees the name |
| Readings or speakers | Anyone who wants to — nobody obligated |
| Flowers or charitable donations | Donations to the Westvale Food Bank in lieu of flowers |
| Attendance preference | Public — the point is the people |
| Livestream or recording | Yes, if simple to arrange — Ellen's family is three hours out |
Family Guide — Frank's entry
The wishes page of the Family Guide — enough to act on the first day; the details are in The Secure Guide.