How to plan and pay for a funeral

A doctor issues a medical certificate of cause of death, or the death is reported to the coroner where it was unexpected, violent, occurred in care, or the cause is unknown. If the coroner is involved, the body is not released immediately and the funeral cannot be scheduled until it is — this is the most common cause of delay and it is nobody's fault.

Contact a funeral director. They will collect the deceased, usually at any hour, hold them, and take you through the arrangements. You are entitled to contact more than one and to ask each for a written itemised quote before you commit to anything.

Before that meeting, look for a will, a prepaid funeral contract, a funeral bond, a written funeral wish or an organ and tissue donation registration. These change the decisions and the money, and finding one afterwards is a common and avoidable distress.

Establish who has authority. The executor named in the will normally has the right and responsibility to arrange the funeral, and where there is no will, the next of kin. Where a family disagrees, this matters legally, not just socially.

The funeral director registers the death with the state registry and orders the death certificate. The certificate takes some days or weeks to arrive and is the document banks, superannuation funds, insurers and Services Australia will ask for. The doctor's certificate is not a substitute for it.

Set the date only once the coroner has released the body, the certifying doctor has signed, and the people who must be there can travel. There is no legal deadline that forces a funeral to happen within a week.

Tell Services Australia, which has a single point of contact for notifying a death and can stop payments, assess bereavement entitlements and refer you to a social worker. Doing this early prevents overpayments that later have to be repaid by the estate.

Funeral costs split into the director's professional fees and the disbursements paid on your behalf. Professional fees cover transfer of the deceased, care and preparation, administration, registering the death, staff at the service and the use of the director's facilities. Disbursements cover the things bought from third parties: the cemetery plot or crematorium fee, doctors' certificates for cremation, newspaper notices, celebrant or clergy, flowers, catering and death certificates.

Burial is normally the more expensive path, because a plot has to be purchased and interment paid for, and in the major capitals a plot can be the single largest item on the invoice. Cremation removes that cost, though a memorial garden, niche or plaque adds some of it back.

The coffin has an enormous price range and is where markup is most concentrated. A plain compliant coffin and an ornate one perform an identical function, and both meet cemetery and crematorium requirements. You are entitled to see the full range, including the cheapest, and to buy one from a third party in most cases.

Service elements — a chapel hire, limousines, a live-streamed service, an order of service booklet, a soloist, a wake with catering — are each priced separately and each is optional. A service held at a home, a park, a club or a church a family already belongs to can cost a fraction of a chapel hire.

Newspaper death notices are frequently a surprise. They are priced by size and by publication, and a notice in a major metropolitan paper can cost more than the celebrant.

The direct or unattended cremation — the deceased is cremated with no service, and the family holds a memorial later at a time and place of their choosing — is the lowest-cost option offered by most providers and is now a significant share of the market. It is not a lesser send-off; it separates the disposal from the memorial.

State governments publish indicative price ranges to help families calibrate. Use those as a sanity check on a quote rather than as a target, because ranges vary substantially between metropolitan and regional areas and between states.

Ring more than one. Prices for the same components differ substantially between providers in the same suburb, and the second call typically takes ten minutes. Many providers now publish price lists online, which makes an initial comparison possible without a meeting.

Ask for a written itemised quote covering professional fees and disbursements separately, and ask what is not included. Several states require providers to give a written itemised quote or to display prices, and any provider unwilling to give one is telling you something useful.

Ask whether the business is locally owned or part of a national group. This does not determine quality, but it does often explain the pricing structure and whether the person you speak to can vary a price.

Ask specifically about the cheapest coffin, the cheapest service option and whether a direct cremation is available. Providers do not always volunteer these.

Check membership of an industry association. Funerals Australia, the national industry body formed from the previous funeral director associations, maintains a code of conduct and a complaints process, which gives you somewhere to go short of a legal claim.

If you have concerns about conduct or pricing after the fact, the consumer protection agency in your state handles funeral industry complaints, and Australian Consumer Law guarantees about services being provided with due care and skill apply to funerals as they do to anything else.

You are allowed to do more yourself than most people realise. Families can transport a deceased person, hold a service without a director and, in most jurisdictions, arrange a burial on private land subject to council and health requirements. It is uncommon, it involves real logistical and legal complexity, and it is worth investigating before a death rather than during one.

The estate pays. Funeral expenses are a first-priority debt of a deceased estate, ahead of most other creditors, and the executor arranges payment from estate assets.

Banks will generally release funds from the deceased's account to pay a funeral invoice before probate has been granted, on production of the invoice and a death certificate. This is a specific exception to the freeze that otherwise applies to a deceased person's account, and many families do not know it exists. Ask the bank directly rather than assuming you must fund it personally.

Superannuation death benefits are usually not part of the estate and are paid by the trustee to dependants or to the estate depending on the fund's rules and any binding death benefit nomination. They frequently include life insurance held inside the fund, which is often the largest single asset a family did not know about. Claims take weeks to months, so they rarely help with the funeral invoice itself.

A prepaid funeral is a contract with a specific funeral director for specific services, paid in advance and held under state rules. It fixes the services rather than merely setting money aside, which protects against price rises but ties you to that provider. Check what happens if you move interstate, if the provider is sold, or if the services are no longer available.

A funeral bond is an investment product that sets money aside without committing to a provider. It is more flexible than a prepaid funeral and, up to a limit, is exempt from the Centrelink assets test, which is why it appears so often in age pension planning. The exempt amount is set by Services Australia and indexed.

Funeral insurance is a different product again and has a poor record. Premiums often rise with age, cover can lapse if a payment is missed, and it is entirely possible to pay more in premiums than the policy will ever pay out. ASIC Moneysmart's assessment is blunt about this, and a funeral bond or ordinary savings usually does the same job better.

If nobody can pay, the funeral still happens. Every state has an arrangement for a destitute or unclaimed funeral, generally administered by the state health department or public trustee, and cemeteries and crematoria participate. It provides a dignified but minimal service. Ask the hospital social worker or the state health department rather than committing to a contract you cannot fund.

Services Australia is the first call. Notifying the death stops payments cleanly, and depending on circumstances there may be bereavement assistance for a partner or carer, continued payments for a period, or a lump sum. The rules differ by payment type and by relationship, and Services Australia social workers can be asked for directly.

State governments publish what financial support is available for funerals in their jurisdiction, including hardship assistance and, in some cases, contributions where the deceased was a child. These schemes are small, means-tested and not widely advertised.

The Department of Veterans' Affairs pays a funeral benefit in defined circumstances for eligible veterans, and war graves arrangements may apply. If the deceased served, ask before paying the invoice.

Where a death arose from a workplace incident, workers compensation in the relevant state generally covers reasonable funeral expenses. Where it arose from a motor accident, the compulsory third party scheme in that state may do the same. Where it arose from a violent crime, victims of crime schemes in most states include funeral expenses.

Private life insurance, credit card travel insurance, mortgage protection, accident cover attached to a bank account and some superannuation policies all sometimes include funeral or repatriation benefits. Search the deceased's paperwork and email for anything resembling a policy, and ask their super fund and bank directly what cover exists.

If the death happened overseas, repatriation is expensive and travel insurance is usually the only realistic funding source. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade provides consular assistance but does not pay for repatriation or funerals.

Keep every receipt. Funeral expenses paid personally by a family member are usually reimbursable from the estate, but only if the executor can see what was spent.

Write down what you want, and tell the person who will have to act on it. A funeral wish is not legally binding on your executor in most of Australia, but in practice families follow written wishes almost without exception, and the absence of them is what produces conflict.

Keep the wishes with your will, not inside a safety deposit box that cannot be opened until probate. A will read after the funeral is a common and preventable problem, because burial and cremation instructions in a will are frequently discovered too late to follow.

Decide the questions that families argue about: burial or cremation, religious or secular, where ashes go, who speaks, and whether you want a service at all. Being specific about a small number of things is more useful than a long list.

Consider whether you want to fund it, and if so how. A funeral bond preserves flexibility and has an assets test concession. A prepaid funeral locks in services with a provider. Ordinary savings in an account your executor can identify are often perfectly adequate and cost nothing to hold.

Register your organ and tissue donation decision and tell your family. Australian donation arrangements depend on family consent in practice, and the conversation is far easier before it is needed.

Record the practical information nobody can find later: your super fund and member number, life insurance policies, the location of your will, your executor's contact details, and any prepaid funeral contract. This single document saves an executor weeks.

Review it after any major change — a new relationship, a move interstate, a death in the family, a change of super fund. Funeral wishes written twenty years ago and never mentioned again tend to name providers that no longer exist.