The obituary typically lists people whom the deceased “is survived by”, I’m not going to say that can never include an ex-spouse or partner but I am going to say I don’t think it includes most - I don’t know anyone who sees or keeps in touch with ex-spouses or partners independent of events involving any shared children or grandchildren.
I’ll use my sister-in-law as an example. She has almost exactly as much contact with her ex-husband as she has with her daughter’s MIL - but no one would ever write an obituary listing my SIL as being survived by her daughter’s MIL. And it doesn’t really make sense to list her ex-husband either.
My sister-in-law included her mother, who had been divorced for more than a decade, in her father’s obituary. And her mother, who is my mother-in-law, was at the funeral and following reception.
Most of the people there were also her family and friends, and she would have missed out on seeing them if she had been excluded, which would have been unfortunate.
In any case, it really depends on the people. My father-in-law may not have agreed, but he was dead. Obituaries and funerals are for the living.
I don’t want either of my exes in my obituary. Both did their best to mess up my life. There will likely be some ill will because of this. My older brother has been married to ex #1’s sister for 50 years and I adopted the daughters of ex #2, I am very close to the girls and their children.
Despite what said about my parents upthread, my ex-wife and I are best friends and very close. We met in '89, married in '93, divorced in '06 and didn’t have kids although we did have shared custody of a dog for a while. I can’t imagine that I will have an obituary but she’d probably get a mention if I did.
My local newspaper will print a death notice for free, basically 2 lines of the person’s name, location, day of death, and funeral home handling the services. Any more than that and it turns into a regular obituary and they start charging by the number of lines and with/without a picture.
As far as ex-spouses mentioned I have seen it both ways. If mentioned, usually along the lines of “Married Jane Smith in 1972, they later divorced”.
After the death of my parents and trying to get the all the names, dates, and events of their lives correct during a somewhat stressful time I mentioned to my wife numerous times we should write our own obituaries (I have mine done), but she finds that creepy. I will leave it up to her if she wants to mention her 1st husband, dated 6 years- high school sweethearts, married for less than 2 years, no kids. Maybe not, she was trying to get pregnant after getting married and her husband fathered a child with another woman during that time = ex-husband.
Did the deceased have a child ?Because it sounds to me like it was the deceased’s co-parent - that is, a person with whom he had a child-in-common, who the family chose to describe that way because “partner” or something similar didn’t fit.
If the decedents bio-father had disappeared, being little more than a sperm donor in the decedent’s life, someone may have included him simply for future geneological purposes while trying to utterly minimize the role of the guy.
Heck, for that matter, what if the co-parent really was a literal sperm donor / surrogate father, part of an IVF program? No familial ostracism / criticism implied, but the man’s role really was sperm and that’s it.