The Objects 10 Celebrities Took to the Grave

The rituals and customs surrounding letting our loved ones go are extremely important to all of us. A funeral, in any form, is an opportunity to express the personality of the deceased. I'm attaching an article from www.mentalfloss.com that talks about 10 celebrities, and the items with which their families chose to bury them. Click here to read the article.

If you have specific wishes for your burial, cremation, memorial service, or celebration of life, you may wonder how to make sure those wishes are honoured. Many people like to include funeral instructions in their wills, but there are two problems with that. One is that the will may not be consulted until after you are buried or cremated, so that it's too late to honour your wishes. The other problem is that wishes you state in your will are just that - wishes - and are not binding on your family.

The person with the decision-making power over your last remains is the executor you appoint in your will. Your executor can legally ignore what your will says about disposing of your remains, and do what he or she thinks is best. Ideally, you should discuss your wishes with your executor. If you express your wishes and your would-be executor recoils in horror at your suggestion, perhaps you need to think about getting a different executor. When a husband and wife name each other as their executors, they generally do know the other's wishes. However, when either the husband or wife is widowed and someone else is named as executor, there needs to be a discussion specifically about funeral wishes.

In reality, most executors do try to honour the deceased's wishes regarding their remains, if those wishes are known. For this reason, I tell my clients that having your funeral or cremation instructions in your will is still a good idea, despite the limitations I mentioned above. If a dispute breaks out among family members regarding what to do about a funeral, everyone will purport to know "what he/she would have wanted". Consulting your will would clear up that issue.

The attached photo of Frank Sinatra accompanied the article on www.mentalfloss.com and is credited to Wall Street Journal/Liquorgear.com.