If you’re an IFA, mortgage adviser, protection adviser, or accountant, you’ll know this feeling.
You can build a really solid plan on paper, protection in place, mortgages reviewed, beneficiaries discussed, tax angles covered. Then a client dies and the “plan” becomes a person, usually a spouse or adult child, staring at a phone and trying to work out what to do first.
And the truth is, the mess starts with the basic answers to questions no one wrote down.
Burial or cremation. Who should be told. Who’s meant to be involved. Whether it’s meant to be private. Whether there’s anything they really didn’t want.
People assume families will just know. They often don’t. Or they disagree. Or they’re too exhausted to make a call they feel confident about. So, they pick something “standard”, or they pick the quickest route, or they end up paying more than they planned because nobody had the headspace to shop around, compare options, or even ask the right questions.
Sometimes it lands on the executor. Sometimes it lands on the family member who’s “good with admin”. Sometimes, it can land on the adviser, because you become the person they ring when they don’t know where to start. Not because you did anything wrong, but because you were the professional who knew them, and they’re trying to get a grip on the chaos.
We’ve seen how quickly this becomes real when there isn’t guidance. We acted as executor for a client who died in a nursing home. We knew she wanted to be buried, but beyond that there wasn’t much to go on, no clear note about where, no sense of who mattered to her, no simple list of people to contact. We were doing what we could, but we were guessing, and guessing is a horrible way to arrange something that’s meant to be personal.
It got more complicated because of family dynamics. There was a son, but she hadn’t seen him for years and she didn’t want him told about her death. The hospital contacted him anyway. That wasn’t cruelty. It’s what systems do when there isn’t a clear plan that’s easy to follow. And it’s exactly why “funeral wishes” aren’t some fluffy extra, they’re practical instructions that stop other people making decisions blind.
This is the bit we think advisers can usefully normalise, without turning a review meeting into a deep emotional chat.
You don’t have to ask clients to plan a funeral down to the flowers. You’re just nudging them to leave a short note with the decisions that cause the most stress when nobody knows the answer. Cremation or burial. Any strong preferences. Who they’d want told. Anyone they wouldn’t want involved. Whether they want it small. Whether they’d want donations to a particular charity. Basic direction.
Because if that note doesn’t exist, then the family doesn’t just grieve, they negotiate. They second-guess each other. They worry about cost while feeling guilty for even thinking about cost. They end up making decisions quickly because they have to, not because it’s what the person would have wanted.
And from an adviser’s point of view, it’s one of those rare planning prompts that does two things at once.
It helps the client, because it’s simple and it creates clarity.
It helps the family later, because it reduces arguments and reduces “we don’t know what to do”.
It also protects the wider plan you’ve helped put in place. Because if the early days after a death are chaotic, everything else becomes harder too, including probate steps, document chasing, and cashflow decisions families weren’t expecting to make.
If you want to make it easy for clients, a gentle nudge is all you need. It can be as plain as: have you written down what you’d want, and does anyone know where to find it?
Because writing it down is only half the job. If it’s “in a drawer somewhere” and nobody knows which drawer, it might as well not exist.
If you work with clients who’d benefit from having their Wills, LPAs, and practical wishes handled in a calm way, we can help as a referral partner. We keep it plain English, no pressure, we don’t cross into financial advice, and we can keep you updated.
If this is something that would help you support your clients, then get in touch.
