We all deal with suicidal deaths from time to time. Interestingly enough and according to the New York Times, despite the proliferation of anti-depressant drugs and the presence of intervention groups such as the Samaritans, the suicide rate has not changed since at least the 1960s.
Below you will find a link to an extensive article which appeared in last week's New York Times Magazine. It provides a modern overview of current research and thinking about suicide and identifies the important distiction between classic suicidal behavior and suicides of "passion" which occur much more at the spur of the moment.
If you've always struggled to understand suicide as I have over the years, this is an excellent place to begin your reading and research.
In the Will or out of the Will?
I had a man visit the funeral home recently asking for a copy of the records for his mother's funeral, including the statement of goods and services along with insurance policy information. I did not give him the information and it took most of an hour to explain in several different ways why he did not have immediate rights to that information (supposedly he had come on the advice of an attorney).
In short, he had a hard time understanding why his "mother's policy" didn't count towards his mother's estate. He kept thinking that anything left over from that life insurance policy should become included in the final accounting.
I had to explain that since the insurance policy had a single beneficiary (one of his sisters), that money belonged completely to his sister and that she had the right to do whatever she wanted with those funds.
I don't see this level of family conflict often (once ever few years) but it does serve as a good reminder for all of us to review with staff some of the differences between estate assets and non-estate assets at the time of death. In this case, the daughter used the procedes of a policy to pay for the entire funeral. She was the sole beneficiary and had complete rights to those funds.
However, make sure your staff understands the difference when multiple beneficiaries get listed or some other entity (like a trust fund) gets listed as a beneficiary. In those cases, others may have rights along with the person making the funeral arrangements.
Talk these things through. It becomes vitally important once someone raises a question, to use clear language and to communicate without defensiveness the differences. Most of the time they have no quarrel with the funeral home if you take the time to talk things through with the disgruntled party. If you've done your job well, and treat people fairly and openly and clearly, the conflict will head in a different direction.
July 08, 2008 in Comments | Permalink | Comments (0)