A friend of ours parents had both passed. He didn’t know anything at all about his fathers side of the family, except the small town that the father was raised in. One day he and his wife took the 7 hour dive to visit this small town.  There in the small towns cemetery were several tombstones with his family name on them.  They notice that there were fresh flowers in pots next to the graves. Hum… wonder who put them there?

    So they wrote a note as they knew no one there, and put it in a zip lock baggy under one of the flower pots. Several months later an e-mail came in. It was the person who had put the flowers there. Turns out to be a 3rd cousin our friends didn’t know he had. The two became Internet friends. A year went by then there was a strange phone call….. It was a person who said he was a friend of the 3rd cousin. The cousin had passed away and had saved the email print outs of their conversations. Our friends wife said this was the only chance to see what he looked like. So they got in the car and made the 7 hour funeral trip.

    Arriving just before the funeral parlor viewing was about to close. There were a couple of people there and they told him how he was almost blind, let his wife do everything and a bit of a hermit. The family resemblance was truly familiar to his own being. Then they invited them to stay for the funeral the next day. A quick decision was made to stay over night for the funeral.

     After the small funeral ceremony the attorney asked to talk with them. He explained that in this state there was no common wife law. So his live in girlfriend of 30+ years had no rights and he was the legal closest living relative.  Our friend did the right thing and signed the estate over to her right away.

    Sadly we have heard this same funeral story many times before in the LGBT Community. Now is the time to make your final plans known and legal.