Obituary

ExpatLegalWills.com is dedicated to providing services related to advance directives prior to one's death, including our MyFuneral™ service, which allows people to specify in advance their funeral wishes and preferences for an obituary.  These wishes will be communicated to a personal "Keyholder®", chosen by the member, when the time is right.  Below are some questions and answers regarding obituaries.

What exactly is an obituary?

Obituaries vary from the very classic summation of a person's life, including just the simple facts in chronological order, but could equally be a poetic celebration of an individual's contribution to everyone's life around them.  An obituary is usually written in paragraph form and will typically chart a person's life, including the place and date of birth, education and professional experience.

Most obituaries appear as a newspaper obituary in a local or national newspaper.  However, there are also online obituaries available, such as the MyLife and MyMemorials services at PartingWishes.com.

How is an obituary written?

You can either write the obituary yourself, or you can appoint somebody else to write it.  If it is written by somebody else, it will usually be a tribute to how you impacted the lives of your friends and loved ones.  It will celebrate your life and mourn your passing.  If it is written by yourself, you can include an account of your life, paying tribute to those who have touched you.  You can write whatever is important to you, but there may be restrictions on the length of the obituary based on the publication that you choose.  The obituary should be published a few days before the memorial service as it should include details of the time and location of the service and any donations that may be made.

If you need inspiration for your obituary, take a look at obituaries online or in national newspapers like the New York Times, the Times of London or the Globe and Mail.

What will be included in my obituary?

An obituary typically includes the following sections in order:

  • An announcement, including the deceased's name, date and location of death and possibly the cause of death.  If you do not want this to be included, and you have chosen somebody else other than yourself to write the obituary, state here that you would not like the cause of death to be included.
  • Biographical information, including birthplace, education, profession, hobbies together with accomplishments and awards.
  • Survivor information, including spouse, parents and children and any other close friends and relatives.
  • If written by an appointed person, they should include any details of the funeral service including the time and location.
  • You can also state that contributions may be made to an organization of your choice rather than sending flowers.

Where should the obituary be published?

This is a personal decision, but you should consider sending the obituary to newspapers in other cities where you have lived or grown up.  You can also make use of the MyLife and MyMemorials services at PartingWishes.com to publish a permanent obituary and memorial.

What is the cost of an obituary?

It may be worth considering that if you are choosing to have the obituary published in one or a number of newspapers, most newspapers charge by the word or by the line.  This may influence the length of your tribute.

How do I specify what I would like in my own obituary?

The MyFuneral™ wizard here at ExpatLegalWills.com includes questions regarding where you would like your obituary to be published, and who you would like to create this obituary.  You can even write your complete obituary yourself, or just specify points that you would like to be included.  Your wishes will be communicated to a personal "Keyholder®", chosen by yourself, when the time is right.

You may feel that writing your own obituary is a rather macabre task, however, it is often overlooked as a part of funeral pre-planning.  By taking care of it yourself, you relieve a loved one of another difficult task imposed on them at a distressing time.  By writing it yourself, you can stamp your personality on the celebration of your life.

How do I create an online obituary?

You can create your own personal permanent online tribute at PartingWishes.com using the MyLife service.  This will be a permanent online obituary which will celebrate your life for a specified number of years, or even until the end of time if you so choose, thus providing you with a form of immortality on the Internet.  This web page will become part of our database archive which your family or the public could search and view for years to come.

You can also use the MyMemorials services at PartingWishes.com to create an online memorial for a friend or loved one that has passed away.  Include photos, thoughts, memories, accomplishments, or anything else you'd like them to be remembered by.

These are incredible ways to create a lasting memorial and tribute to a person's life.   An opportunity for future generations to read, see, hear and learn about how they lived and how important they were to their family, to their friends, and to their community.

Want to create an online memorial for a family Pet? Visit www.ILovedMyPet.com

How It Works

When you create a Will or legal document at LegalWills, you can designate up to 20 different Keyholders®. Your chosen Keyholders® will be given the trust and power to unlock specific information within your account such as health care directives, funeral wishes, final messages, uploaded files, Power of Attorney, or Last Will and Testament.

You can also implement security mechanisms to prevent premature access to these documents. The entire process of creating your Will and other legal documents at LegalWills is seamless and iterative, meaning you can continue to make changes until you're happy with the final product.
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Frequently Asked Questions

There is no requirement to use the services of a lawyer or notary public to prepare your own estate planning documents, including your Last Will and Testament.

The law that defines the legality of a Will is written specifically for each Province, State and Country, but in summary the law requires that the Will is written on a piece of paper and signed in the presence of two witnesses who cannot be beneficiaries to the Will.

Lawyers can certainly help you to prepare your Will, but everybody has a legal right to write their own Will. If you create a document using our service, it must be printed, signed and witnessed according to our instructions, and then it becomes a legal Last Will and Testament.
Quite simply, because we do not provide you with legal advice.

We are giving you direct access to the same software that lawyers use to prepare their documents, but you are doing it yourself. However, if you need custom clauses written to cover an unusual situation, we cannot do that, and we recommend that you seek legal advice. For example, if you have a child with special needs, they would need a trust written for their inheritance. We don't do that.

In most cases, a document written using our service will be word-for-word identical to one prepared by a lawyer.

There are no other payments required to prepare your legal Will. You can have a legal Will in your hands for $49.95USD with nothing else to pay, ever.

What other options are there?
If you wish, you can have your Will reviewed by one of our lawyers for $69.00USD. Most people do not need this, and would not benefit from it, but if you have selected an option such as "None of the above. Let me describe in detail how to distribute my estate.", then you may want to consider this.

Your Will must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. If you do not have access to a printer, we can print it for you and mail it out. The cost for this is $9.95USD, but again, most people do not need this option.

We also offer other services like MyLifeLocker™, a Financial Power of Attorney, and a Living Will. They are not required, but they may be useful to you depending on your situation.

What about document storage?
We do not store physical documents, but we allow you to maintain an account with us if you want to update your document in the future.

The Will service costs $49.95USD. With this payment, you are able to prepare your Will. It also gives you one year of unlimited updates to the document. You are able to print the document as often as you wish during that first year. You can download it as a PDF or Word file, but to make your document a legal Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses. The online version is there for your convenience only.

If you choose not to maintain an account with us after the first year, your initial payment is all you will ever pay. We do not keep credit card details on file and cannot automatically charge beyond this initial payment.

If you wish, you can choose to store your documents online for longer than a year, which will make it easier to make updates in the future to reflect any changes in your personal or financial situation (rather than returning to a lawyer each time). This is of course optional, but it does make the process of maintaining your document more convenient. $11.95USD will give you one additional year of updates, or you can purchase multiple years: 5 years at $29.95USD, 10 years at $39.95USD, 25 years at $79.95USD ($3.20USD per year).

Every time you make an update to your Will, it must first be printed, and then signed in the presence of two witnesses again. If you choose not to maintain an account with us, you will always have your printed, signed document. If you don't need to make changes to that document, it will last you for the rest of your life, whether or not you have an account with us.

What happens if I don't maintain an account, and then in a few years I need to update it?
If your account has not been touched in years, and it is inactive, we reserve the right to remove the account. You will receive an email notification that your account might be removed. However, in practice, we have never actually removed any accounts in our over 24 years of operation.

So, in all likelihood, you will be able to simply login to your account and pay $11.95USD to reactivate it. This will give you one year of unlimited updates from the date of payment. (You will not have to pay for your inactive years.)

Yes, if you reside in Canada, the United States, England or Wales.

A Will covers the distribution of the assets that you own, often those that are located in your home country.

A Power of Attorney (also known as a Power of Attorney for Finances) and Living Will (also known as a Power of Attorney for Health Care), are very important documents that should be created and updated at the same time as your Will.

This website allows you to create a Will, Expatriate Will, Power of Attorney and Living Will.
Here are just a few differences:

  • We have designed our legal document creation services to be of the best quality available today.   We have evaluated many existing do-it-yourself kits and web-based services. We were shocked by the poor quality, limited instructions, and low value for money that many of these do-it-yourself kits provide consumers. 

  • Incredible value for money.   Our membership pricing model allows us to provide you with the most value for your money at prices that are unprecedented in the legal industry. We worked with lawyers to bring you this service, and we paid for their legal services so you don't have to. 

  • Plain language help and instructions.  In addition, all of our services provide you with complete instructions and answer your questions in everyday language, free of legal industry jargon.  We have developed our services based on the requirements of the public, not dictated by the legal profession.  Our wizards, help and information are also designed to be the best on the market and are kept up-to-date on an ongoing basis.  

  • Create your legal documents from the comfort of your own home.  No lawyer required.  Our unique approach allows you to make use of the ultimate convenience of the Internet to write your Expatriate Will and other documents at your own pace, online, and to make changes online at any time free of charge. 

  • Free unlimited updates.  Don't pay a lawyer every time you need to update your documents. We allow your documents to be kept securely online so that you can make free unlimited updates for as long as you are a member.

  • You can still have it reviewed by a lawyer. We have worked with lawyers in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom to bring you these services and to ensure that they are of the highest quality. But if you wish, we can still arrange for your documents to be reviewed by one of our lawyers, who will check the documents for consistency and completeness.

  • The Keyholder® Advantage. You can take advantage of our unique messaging service which allows you to describe the exact location of your documents and to provide a detailed list of assets for your Executor. All for no extra charge. When you pass away, let us worry about communicating this information to the people you specify. There is simply no other company that provides such a complete and convenient service to their customers. For more information, read about The Keyholder® Advantage.

  • We employ a strong focus on protecting the privacy and security of your information.  We use industry standard encryption algorithms for storing all of your private information, and the design of our services ensures that the contents of your information are made available to the specific people designated by yourself, and only at the appropriate time. 

  • Keep informed and up to date.  If you wish, we can inform you by email about any changes in legislation which may have occurred in your jurisdiction that may require changes to your documents.  Or we can send you simple email reminders, no more than once a year, to remind you to consider updating your documents if any significant changes have occurred in your life.  

Other websites and do-it-yourself kits simply do not compare.

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