MyFuneral™

Describing your funeral wishes ahead of time relieves your family and loved ones of making difficult decisions, at a time when they are least equipped to deal with them. The service at LegalWills.co.za steps you through some of these decisions, at absolutely no charge. You can then store your wishes online using our secure, encrypted servers, so that your loved ones can access them when they need them.

If you do not communicate your wishes ahead of time, your funeral arrangements can be a source of disagreement amongst family members. Funeral homes often guilt loves ones into paying way more for a funeral than is necessary. They usually offer different service levels and packages at different prices and steer loved ones to more expensive packages as a mark of respect.

Funerals end up being one of the most expensive purchases that you will ever make. You can address these costs by clearly articulating your funeral wishes and giving your family permission to not feel guilty when they save some money.

When you step through the MyFuneral™ service, you may be prompted to think about issues that have previously never occurred to you. Hopefully, you will find our service informative and engaging.

Perhaps you have certain spiritual beliefs that should be reflected in your funeral ceremony. You may have a favourite poem, or an item to be buried with. Every funeral should be unique and an expression of a life lived. It is one of the few occasions that will bring together everybody who knew you. Do you want them to mourn their loss, or celebrate your life? You can decide.

There is a common misconception that you should describe your funeral wishes in your Last Will and Testament. In actual fact, it is better to describe them in a separate document. Your Will is a legal document that has very particular signing requirements. In order to be accepted as your Will it must go through a formal probate process. By the time this process is completed, your funeral will probably be over. If you use a service like MyFuneral™, your wishes get to the people who need them at the most appropriate time.

You only need to answer the questions within the service that are important to you. You can certainly skip any sections within the service. The MyFuneral™ service allows you to express things like: People use MyFuneral™ in different ways. For some, it is a very private exercise where they think about songs to be played, the people who will be in attendance, and the general style of their service. For others, it can be a collaborative task with a focus on costs and logistics. It can be kept private until after you have passed away, or it can be used as a platform for pre-planning your funeral with a funeral home or undertaker.

See our Products & Prices page for more details.

After you have stepped through the MyFuneral™ service, you will be able to download and print your final document. This can be stored with your other important papers, to be discovered by your Executor or loved ones. We also provide an option to store your information online, in our encrypted database. If you do this, you can name designated Keyholders®, who can access the information with their unique Keyholder® ID. After you have passed away, your Keyholders® can login at LegalWills.co.za from anywhere in the world, and apply to view your documents.

There is more information available about our proprietary Keyholder mechanism. The instructions for setting up Keyholders® is available under the MyKeyholders™ service after you have logged in.

In addition, you can send your Keyholders® a personalised wallet card which contains all of the information that they need to access your funeral wishes. You can set this up using the MyWalletCards™ service which is available after you have logged in.

The most important step in the Keyholder® process is that you name trusted individuals who you would not expect to access your information before the appropriate time. But our service does have security mechanisms in place to help secure your information.

When your Keyholders® login with their unique Keyholder® ID, they can view the service to which they have been assigned access. They can then apply to view the contents of each service including MyFuneral™.

When they apply to view your funeral wishes, you are immediately notified by email. The service is locked for a period of time, configured by you within the MySecurity™ service. During this waiting time, you have the option to lock the service to prevent the release of the information. If you do not respond (you have passed away), then once the waiting period is over, your funeral wishes are made available to your Keyholder(s)®.

Your funeral is typically arranged by your next of kin. The wishes that you express using the MyFuneral™ service serve as a guide to your next of kin, but they are not legally binding. Usually, your next of kin would welcome the guidance and respect your wishes, but they are under no legal obligation to follow your instructions.

It depends on how many sections you choose to complete. You can certainly step through the MyFuneral™ service in as little as 10 minutes, but it is more likely that some questions will make you think about issues that you have never previously considered. You may want to conduct your own research into local funeral homes or the costs associated with a funeral. There may be questions that will trigger the need for a discussion with family and loved ones.

Fortunately, you do not have to step through the service in one sitting. You can answer just a few questions, and then save your work. You can come back to it by logging into your account at LegalWills.co.za and pick up from where you left off. You can spend weeks or months preparing your funeral wishes if you need to.

Please take a look at our Security page for detail on how we protect your information to ensure that it is never lost or susceptible to unauthorised access.

The best way to learn about the MyFuneral™ service is to try it out. You can step through the service without entering any credit card details - you will not be charged a penny. There is help every step of the way, with detailed information about each decision.

If you have additional questions, or need information about our other services, just email us at [email protected] and we will be happy to help.