How to word in my will that I don't want estranged parent at my funeral?

[sarah010179]

with the new year approaching, I'm getting my financial affairs and paperwork in order. One of the things will be to write a will.
I have an outline of my wishes and one of the most important things to me is that an estranged (very toxic) parents does not attend my funeral or graveside. How do I word this in a professional but clear sounding way? Unfortunately, I have no faith that my other parent would respect this wish (they have form for going against my wishes on serious matters), so I want it written in some kind of official, unambiguous way that the estranged parent doesn't attend and gets asked to leave/removed if they show up. Ideas?

As others have said, putting it in your will might mean it doesn't get seen before your funeral.
Do a separate funeral plan and make sure people close to you know your wishes. Include everything in your funeral plan - cremation/burial/direct cremation, wake or not, people to invite, people to excude if you wish, music and readings if you want a service etc.

I specifically told someone to stay away from my Mum's funeral and they did.
I had briefed others on the day to keep an eye out for the poisonous old bat.
If they had turned up, I would have thrown them out....

You can also put a comment in your will explaining why you're excluding them from inheriting from you should you pre-decease them.
That will make it harder for them to challenge your will and say you just forgot to include them.

Our local undertakers if informed will turn people away if not wanted at the funeral.
Took the stress away .

As I have said we were in fact allowed to remove the third executor as it was in the will.
We also could not see the will until after the funeral, again all written into the will.
Our deceased relative had the whole process very tightly sewn up in the will.

And how precisely do they police this? They could ask them to leave, but they cannot prevent entry!

You are right. I misunderstood the fact that funeral plans are actioned immediately. I was thinking of the distribution of the estate. My apologies.

Still the executor of the Will can't stop people from attending the funeral/cremation if they hear about it. This is not something the OP or the executor can prevent.

My father wants quite an elaborate funeral and he has been advised (I think by a solicitor) that he can make it a condition of his will. That is, we won’t get anything until he gets his marching band!!!

Sorry but this is nonsense.

I think we decided to read the will to the rest of the family because they weren’t getting anything like they thought they were. One member had already got planning ( a year before! ) for an extension which they thought they’d pay for with their inheritance. The will didn’t leave them anything.

So my dh read it out but he didn’t have to.

Someone’s been telling you porkies - my guess is the solicitor who hoped to get a nice income from executing a complex will. A solicitor - indeed anyone - cannot prevent a will being opened and handed over to the Executors named in the will.
My will is in a filing cabinet in my loft - if I had written in it that it was not to be opened until after I had been buried, how would anyone know that unless they actually opened it?
There are wishes that can be written into a will, and actual legal processes. Wishes do not have to be followed. Legal processes do.

This may have already been suggested but if you are absolutely resolute that this person shouldn’t have any prospect of involvement then you could write a formal letter of your wishes and lodge it with your solicitor or a very trusted person.

Have a direct cremation ( this can still be attended by loved ones but doesn’t involve a service. The details of this can be kept absolutely private)

Have a memorial service for friends and family strictly by invitation.

Have your ashes scattered in a place unknown to the NC parent.

You can’t. My granny wanted one of those wicker caskets for her funeral, once we got the quote we realised there was no way she’d have spent that amount of money, as she was quite tight with money 😁 So we ignore that wish!

@StandingSideBySide

The solicitor acted improperly in that case as he/she should have shared the will with the co executors as soon as they were informed legally their client had died (usually on production of the death certificate) however contentious they should be able to see it and there's then no legal reason to share the contents any more widely until probate is granted and the will is available as a matter of public record.

We have just gone through this process and the contentious issue was notified by the executors informing the recipient of the will contents as pertains to them at a time of their choosing in a formal letter with a copy of the will (redacted) attached. Lead and balloon are a phrase synonymous with the atmosphere

Our relative kept their will at the solicitors. No other copies although we knew who the solicitor was.

I appreciate people may not have come across this before but we have.

The solicitor notified us that we were executors and arranged for the reading after the funeral as this is what the deceased wanted.
So that’s what we all did.

Quick question, not trying to derail the thread; what happens if nobody knows where the will is (or who the executors are) and a copy can't be found in the deceased's papers? Is the deceased simply treated as intestate?

Surely very unusual? Even if a will has been lodged with a solicitor, copies are often given in advance to family or close friends named as executors. Dh (a named executor) was given a copy of a friend’s will well before he died, and my DM gave copies to family executors well before her death, too.

In any case, I would never leave the sole copy of a will with a solicitor! Firms get taken over, things get lost - it’s by no means unknown.

I would think so, the rules of intestacy would kick in I think if all best efforts to find any will failed, including checking with solicitors, banks, etc

I was the executor of my stepfather's estate. I had the will several years before he died.

He asked for his ashes to be scattered in a specific place by the Humanists with no ceremony and no onlookers.

When he died, I spoke to the Humanists who said that they would happily arrange for this type of thing but the place he'd requested was the grounds of a Listed Building so they'd have to ask permission which might not be granted.

I knew that this place was special to him and it was where he had scattered some of my mum's ashes. So I ignored the parts of the Will specifying the Humanists and specifying that noone should be there. I collected his ashes and took them to the special place where I drank a last cup of tea with him and then scattered his ashes where he wanted them to be.

No ceremony.
No service
No onlookers

I interpreted the spirit of his Will, if not the actual wording.

Agree. Stop wasting your life worrying .

You can write whatever you want but it won’t stop turning up. Funerals are public, as are burials and gravesites. You cannot control the narrative on this one.

You've got to be a massive colossal twat to want to go to a funeral where you know you are not wanted.

I bet entry can be prevented. Pretty sure I couldn't have rocked up at someone like Liam Payne's funeral without being chucked out on my arse.

OP says there is a high chance they will die before their parents.

Can you stop someone going to a funeral?

If a funeral is arranged through a funeral director, then the funeral director can bar access to anybody not permitted by the person who has arranged the funeral, while the body is within the funeral director’s private premises. A crematorium owned by a private company, such as the Co-op, Dignity or Westerleigh are also private premises, so the same can apply if the crematorium management agrees to restrict entry.

However, many crematoria are owned by local authorities and are usually classed as public buildings. As public buildings they generally have open access during published opening hours.

Speaking to the former manager of a local authority crematorium, I was informed that they would not deny access to anyone who wanted to attend a funeral in their chapel. However, if the person arranging the funeral requested it, the ceremony would be marked as ‘private’ on the list of funerals shown outside the premises, without the name of the person to be cremated.

I think the best option is to have the appointed person that you have entrusted to carry out your wishes, to arrange a small private funeral, invitation only, on private property.

The OP also stated that she didnt want the other person attending her graveside.....you could have all the bouncers in the world at the funeral (if you waned that 'vibe') but cant see how this it is achievable to stop someone coming to your graveside?