I believe she did. I’m sure I would’ve heard if she didn’t.
I sent a link to this thread to a friend of mine who’s been a funeral director for many years. He wrote:
"I have done everything from bringing the violating party in at an off-hour (late night/early morning) to negotiating with both sides separately, emphasizing dignity and that their loved one is entitled to respect regardless of the circumstances.
"The article seems to take the position of the Golden Rule (he who has the gold makes the rules), but we have always tried to emphasize that it is still our facility, and we have the right to protect it.
“A good line is to mention security, and that we really do not wish to have a police officer present (at the family’s expense) but if need be we will.”
What I’m seeing is a whole bunch of weird speculation about who may or may not come to a funeral. The thing is this: it is VERY unusual to prevent anyone from coming to someone’s funeral, and the majority of funeral homes out there will tell you that they don’t get involved in blocking someone from a funeral.
I can’t even imagine putting that much effort into physically preventing someone from sitting at a funeral, minding their own business. If they aren’t hurting anyone and aren’t there to picket with signs or whatever, who cares??
I do recognize, however, that there are those who totally throw etiquette to the wind and make a scene over someone they don’t like attending a funeral. The truth is, though, that if you are the family of someone who has died, you’re supposed to be there for your other family members, to ease their grief. You shouldn’t even worry about who’s there. It shouldn’t be about looking around like a dumbbell, trying to see who’s there who shouldn’t be.
Sometimes, you have to just get over yourself and try to have a little decorum. If there’s someone there you don’t like, don’t speak to them. If you see them coming toward you, start speaking to someone else.
If you only want family at a funeral but are also having a visitation (this is the proper way to have a family-only funeral) you list the visitation time, indicating something like, “the family will receive friends from 5-7 pm Monday at XX Funeral Home.” Then, if you want to have an invitation-only funeral or burial, indicate something like, “Private service [and/or] burial will be at a later date.” You don’t just keep folks from attending a funeral that has been announced in the paper.
As a matter of legal access, I would expect such a funeral to be analogous to a party reserving a banquet room at a restaurant. The restaurant has a right to refuse seating at the table by me or you or any other crasher, at the request of the client booking the room. In the event of trouble, the police can be summoned. If there is an expectation of unauthorized attendees, I think it is the usual practice to hire an off-duty police officer to be on standby – as would be the case at, say, a political rally.
I would expect a funeral director to, at the outset, routinely ask the bereaved if they wish to have a public or a private service, and be in a position to advise their clients about any arrangements that can be made in order to enforce their wishes, including hiring security personnel (at the client’s expense) to enforce any desired restrictions on attendees.
This is the core of the discussion - is a funeral a “private party” limited to invitees? Or is it a public service open to all comers?
Generally I believe it is the latter. Publishing an notice of when the service is, with the date and time, is a public invite. And… outsiders like funeral directors, like wedding organizers, probably find it safest to leave the family disputes up to the family.
Then the question becomes, can you exclude a person from a public event with a public published open invitation? How much of a scene do you want to make to do so?
I wouldn’t think that matters. Private property pretty much trumps all that - and if the funeral home or the cemetery wants you to leave you will be escorted out. As long as the funeral home listens to the people paying them none of the rest really matters. I can invite you to a party and then ask you to leave.
Others have said the party paying the bill, has a right to refuse entrance to certain persons. Actually, the person paying the bill, is the person who occupies the casket. 99% of funerals are paid by a life insurance policy, which was purchased by the deceased. The person requesting funeral services, offers the deceased’s life insurance policy, as payment for services. The person requesting those services rarely would pay for a funeral from their own pocket.
Not in the case of either of my parents. My father paid for my mother’s funeral, and as the executor of my father’s estate, I paid for his. In neither case was a life insurance policy asked for or offered.
Granted the money from the insurance policies can go back into the same pocket that paid for the funeral, but that isn’t the same as providing an insurance policy as collateral.
Now, a prepaid funeral plan is essentially an insurance policy on the to-be-deceased that names the funeral home as the beneficiary.
As mentioned upthread, since the estate in in flux, typically the immediate family pays and is reimbursed by the executor later; unless the executor is already in the driver’s seat. Presumably most people have enough to cover the rudiments of a funeral when they die. Which brings us to the question of - if the estate is in deficit, what process does/must the executor use to determine what bills to pay before the money runs out? I assume funeral has a higher claim over car payments or credit card bills…?
And what happens if the deceased, like this thread, won’t stay dead? Do zombies get a second funeral?
My mother paid for my father’s funeral out of the proceeds from a life insurance policy- but she was the beneficiary of the policy ( not the estate) and it was her money to spend as she chose. She was perfectly free to chose a “city burial” (Potters Field) and keep all of the money.
When I was at a military casualty notification class, the explanation we got was this:
In any funeral there will be one person designated as being responsible for “disposing” of the remains. Who this person is varies by state… Most often, the state will honor your will or other documentation, but a small number of states require it be the next-of-kin and have laid out an order of precedence for deciding who this person is.
Regardless of how it is decided, the person with authority over the remains is also the Master and Commander of the funeral. They can legally exclude a person from the funeral as if it were any other private function. In such a case, the excluded person might have to wait outside the funeral home, for example, until the service is over.
Apparently this happens all the time. Most often, it is a case in which the parents of the deceased have some kind of feud or antagonism with the spouse, and whoever has authority over the disposition has the legal right to control whether they get to come to the funeral. The other problem that comes up is when a person gets divorced and remarried but their paperwork (whether a will or a military DD93) still designates the ex-spouse as having authority over their remains because they forgot to get it updated. The ex-spouse could, conceivably, bar the current spouse from attending. It’s a really tragic situation.
I can’t conceive of why a person would actually do this, but apparently there are just some people in the world who are so hateful and vindictive and have so much bad blood between their families that they can and will do just such a thing.
That may or may not be true.
There are two kinds of “private property” – that which is “your castle”, and that which happens to be under private (as opposed to public) ownership but is designated to be open for the general public to access, such as a shopping mall parking lot or a sports stadium. A funeral home would fall in the second category, and it could be problematic for the “owner” to try to regulate which members of the general public are free to enter it.
It may be entirely possible for an owner of a publicly-accessible facility to deny certain persons access, but there is a heavier burden of proof surrounding the justification for barring certain persons. There mere fact that the Hatfields shop at Walmart does not necessarily justify the McCoys being banned from coming into the store, absent probable cause that a civil disturbance is likely to ensue.
Not necessarily true. In most jurisdictions, the owner of a “public” place can ask a person not to come back (“we don’t serve droids here…”). However, as a public place (private property open to the general public) you cannot be charged with trespassing simply for showing up. You can ne charged if you are asked to leave by the owner and don’t; or they give you a notice to stay away and you return.
(In Ontario, the last I heard the “Petty Trespassing Act” worked like this. You asked someone to leave, and gave them a formal notice they were not welcome there - usually a standard letter. If they show up again, they can be charged.)
This brings us full circle to who has the authority to ban someone. Presumably the owner or tenant - the funeral home owner or his representative - has that authority. (As does the mall manager, or the manager of the store you are being barred from). Unless those people specifically designate someone, the widow at the funeral has no authority to ask her 6’6" 300lb son Bubba “Linebacker” Smith to remove people. He would have to rely on his persuasive charms.
This is false. The proprietor has broad rights to expel anyone who is no longer welcome. If they ask a person to leave (ie. they have rescinded that person’s permission to be on their property) the person must do so. If they do not, they are a trespasser and can be forcibly ejected from the premises.