What happens if you have nothing

[Jux]

There was an advert about funeral costs insurance, and it set me wondering about when you have nothing. Your home has been sold - if you were lucky enough to own it in the first place - and any savings you had have been eaten up by nursing home fees; you have nothing left, your relatives have been trying to pay for your care but can't do so any longer. You've been ousted from the home because no-one can pay for it, so you're living with a relative in their spare room (and lucky in that a relative has room and will take you in), and then you die. There's no 'estate', no land or property, no investments, no money, nothing.

Are there such things as 'pauper's funerals' any more? What happens when there's nothing and no-one can pay?

DWP funeral grant although the person taking responsibility for the funeral has to claim it.

Some people are lucky with where they live, it entirely depends on the local council.

Where we live if someone dies and they have no money and they have family but the family are unable or unwilling to pay the council will take the person and give them a ‘paupers cremation’
there is no service and nobody is able to attend, they basically cremate the person when the crematorium has a spare slot, so they can’t even tell the family when they might be cremated.

I helped a friend go through all this last year and it was pretty depressing, she was told she had to write to the council basically refusing the responsibility of her deceased family member so that the council would take them, she begged to be able to go to the crematorium but was told they had no way to know when it would happen and it could be weeks before it happened, and if she wanted the ashes she would have to pay for them.

It made a sad time much worse.

This is why I think it’s so important for everyone to make provisions for their funeral, it shouldn’t be left to be a burden on the family.

But the reality is that sometimes people don't have the money to pay for their own funeral.

It's necessary for relatives to write to the council and formally declare they can't or won't pay to discourage chancers abusing the system. Councils are very strapped for cash so the provision has to be basic and done in the cheapest way possible.

If it was the case that you could get the council to pay for a nice funeral with cars, flowers and a service at your convenience, then some people would choose to do it that way rather than pay themselves.

Oh, and to answer the OPs point about assets being eaten up by nursing home fees, you don't pay for nursing homes when you're down to your last £23k or so, so there will be people in this position with some assets that can pay.

I believe that if you can pay, for funerals, nursing homes etc, then you should, otherwise people are effectively expecting complete strangers in the form of the taxpayers, to pay up in order to preserve their inheritance.

If you're in a care home and any assets have been spent I believe social services will take over.
How old are you and why are you worrying about such a thing?

A typical plot in a cemetery holds about 3 or 4 people, so I guess if the council is using their plots for people who can't afford their own, that's what they mean by shared grave.

But I suppose that with 3-4 unrelated people in one plot, it's difficult to put a headstone, and of course there's no-one to pay for it.

With land shortages in cemeteries I would expect most public health funerals to be cremations except for very specific religious reasons.

Hecateh, that seems feel a lot better about the sort of society I live in! I do wonder how long that will continue us to be the case, though.

I have always I intended to leave my body to science, one way or another so this question doesn't apply to me particularly, but I do know more and more people who havenothing, live hand to mouth, and then that advert came on, and those people couldn't pay into a funeral p!an either.

At least a basic funeral will be covered and that's all you need.

...makes me feel a lot better...... Why is it called autocorrect? It should be autofuckup.

The council will do a paupers funeral or you can get a grant to help if you are in certain benefits plus a loan which can be repaid and then there is finance available from certain undertakers.

If you want to leave your body to science OP, make sure your wishes are clear, and perhaps make some enquiries with local medical schools to see if there is anything you can do to make it easier when you do go, as an elderly neighbour of mine always said she wanted to donate her body to science, but when the time came, no-one could find anything written down so it couldn't be done.

Remember, that the funeral plan advert was exactly that, an advert, designed to use a traumatic event and sentiment to extract money from people for profit.

Thank you, Barbara. Funnily enough, there was a thread about that very thing here on MN, quite a few years ago! It had a link to an organisation which you contacted if you wanted to leave your body to science. I can't remember the details, but I looked them up at the time and thought "I'll have to do something about that" and then Life, ironically, got in the way

I guess I'd better take it all a bit more seriously nI'm in my 60s.

I wasn't worried about the ad for me, it just got me wondering about people who have nothing.