Final Arrangements

If you happen to be away from home when you die, is there a facility through travel insurance, health insurance or contract with your employer to re-patriate your body?

Typically, young travellers will say they don’t care and they will expect to be dealt with according to local custom. But, if their parents are still living surely they would want to deal with this at home. Following on from the Bali bombings, where almost all the victims were young men and women a long way from home, most of them had never considered the consequences of premature death under such circumstances. One young man had the foresight to take out life insurance and assign the policy to his mother. She was then able to pay for her flight to Hong Kong and choose what to do for her son and the rest of the family.

It is advisable in your Will to make a statement which will alert your executors to the possibility of repatriation costs being covered by funds available from insurance or a company contract. Without such a clause available funds may be overlooked, insurance companies do not volunteer money, it must be claimed!  You would not wish your executors to deal with your funeral overseas because they did not realise there were funds available to take your body home for disposal.   

It is common practise now to pay for your funeral in advance, that way you get what you want and save your family the embarrassment of having to find the funds before money is available from your estate. There is an amount which may be spent on funeral expenses from the estate and is therefore not taxed in the UK, and it isn’t very much. Repatriation costs are not part of this allowance and will be met out of the taxable portion of the estate if you originate from a country which still has Estate Duty or Inheritance Tax (UK, USA). If you have made no provision in your Will for these costs to be met from your estate, then your family will have to foot most of the bill.

Pre-paid funeral plans have lots of advantages. Your family will have no decisions to make because you have specified what you want and paid for it all. If the costs go over the statutory allowance, it is of no significance and because the money is already spent it will not be taxed as part of your estate

A reliable funeral plan provider will hold its’ subscribers money in a trust fund that is monitored by actuaries. Because the money held in trust is invested properly it will keep up with inflation and your costs are still covered even if the price of funerals rises (Very likely!) Be wary of parting with money in advance to private Funeral Directors, however, who may have a business failure before you die, taking your money down with them.

The cost of re-patriation of a body is considerable because of the hygiene requirements of embalming, the need for a lead-lined coffin and the cost of sending it by air freight, calculated on weight.       

If there is a delay in issuing a grant of probate it might not be possible to use the deceased’s money in the bank to pay for anything. How could this happen?