Should I Put My Funeral Wishes in My Will?

There is a common misconception that a will controls what happens to your body and funeral arrangements. In fact, legal authority over funeral arrangements, and indeed over the body itself, rests with your executors (or, if there is no will, the people entitled to apply for letters of administration), not with any wishes expressed in the will itself. Executors are legally entitled to arrange the funeral as they see fit, even if this conflicts with what you wrote down.

This does not mean your wishes are pointless. In practice, the great majority of executors and families make every effort to follow a deceased person's known wishes about their funeral, out of respect and because it is usually what everyone wants to do anyway. The issue is purely one of enforceability if there were ever a serious disagreement, not of whether recording wishes is worthwhile.

A significant practical problem with relying solely on your will to record funeral wishes is timing. Funerals typically need to be arranged within a couple of weeks of death, while a will is often not located, read, or even looked at by the family until some time afterwards, particularly if it is stored with a solicitor or in a safe place that takes time to access.

This means that even carefully recorded funeral wishes in a will can easily arrive too late to influence the actual arrangements, which is one of the strongest practical arguments for not relying on the will alone, and instead making sure the people who will actually organise your funeral know your wishes well before that becomes necessary.

Common funeral wishes people record include a preference for burial or cremation, particular readings, music or a type of service (religious, non-religious or humanist), preferences about flowers or donations to charity instead, and sometimes wishes about who should be involved in organising things. There is no legal restriction on what you can say, only on whether it must be followed.

Some people also leave wishes about matters like organ donation, which is a separate legal system (organ donor registration) that operates independently of your will and is far more effective recorded through the NHS Organ Donor Register and discussed with family, since, again, timing means a will is rarely consulted before decisions about donation need to be made.

The single most effective thing you can do is tell your executor, and ideally your close family, what you want directly, while you are alive, rather than relying only on a written document that may not be seen in time. A conversation, however brief, carries real weight, and gives your executor confidence about what you actually wanted, particularly if family members disagree after your death.

Alongside this, many people keep a separate, clearly labelled letter of wishes somewhere accessible, such as with important papers at home, given to a close family member, or held by your solicitor with instructions that it should be looked at immediately on death rather than only when the full will is read. This addresses the timing problem far better than relying on the will document itself, which is often stored more formally and consulted later.

If you have strong wishes about your funeral, particularly around cost or a specific type of send-off, a prepaid funeral plan can provide more certainty than written wishes alone, since it sets out and often pays for specific arrangements in advance, though it is worth researching providers carefully and understanding what is and is not included.

Ultimately, funeral wishes work best as a combination of approaches: a brief note in the will as a record, a more detailed letter of wishes kept somewhere accessible, and, most importantly, a conversation with the people who will actually be responsible for making the arrangements when the time comes.