Before cremations as part of Cleveland, OH cremation services, immediate family members of the person who died will have to ask their employers, if they’re still working, for time off of work to attend make funeral plans for their loved ones. Some employers have bereavement leave plans in place, while other employers do not.

Bereavement leave is leave granted from work for employees who’ve lost an immediate family member (spouse, child, sibling, parent, grandparent, grandchild, in-law, stepchild, or stepparent). While it would be logical to assume that all employers would have a bereavement leave policy, many employers do not.

There are no federal laws that require employers to grant bereavement leave to their employees.

At the state level, only Oregon has enacted a bereavement leave law for companies with 25 or more employees. These companies must give two weeks of bereavement leave – it doesn’t have to be paid – to all employees who’ve lost an immediate family member.

The state of Illinois has a bereavement law that requires companies with 50 or more employees to grant 10 days of unpaid leave to employees who’ve lost a child.

Therefore, most employers can decide whether or not to grant bereavement leave. If they do grant bereavement leave, they can decide how long the bereavement leave lasts and they can decide whether to grant it as paid or unpaid time off of work.

For those companies that do grant bereavement leave, the usually amount of time is three days after the death of an immediate family member. Often this puts family members who must travel long distances to the location of the funeral in a situation where there isn’t enough time to get there, take part in the funeral, and return home.

So, there are many instances where immediate family members miss the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones and miss the opportunity to grieve in person with other family members.

The bereavement leave policies in the United States are, for the most part, left up to the goodwill of employers. The federal government’s only real effort toward enabling family members to be with their dying loved ones and to be able to plan their funerals and share other family members’ grief is the Family Medical Leave Act.

However, the Family Medical Leave Act also has stipulations as to whether it can be used as part of bereavement leave. Only private employers with 50 or more employees during each of 20 or more weeks in the previous year are eligible to offer Family Medical Leave to their employees.

And, while the Family Medical Leave Act offers up to 12 weeks of family and medical leave, the time off is unpaid. Additionally, many employees who use the Family Medical Leave Act find that their jobs are not protected, and if they use the maximum time available (three months), often come back to find that they no longer have a job with their employer.

Other nations do a much better job taking care of their citizens and employees when a death in the family occurs. In Canada, for instance, all citizens who have been continuously employed for three months are guaranteed three days of bereavement leave following the death of a loved one in their immediate family. In Sweden, every employee is entitled to up to 10 days of paid bereavement leave each year.

For more information about bereavement leaved and Cleveland, OH cremation services, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit our funeral home at 2165 E. 89th Street, Cleveland, OH 44106, or you can call us today at (216) 791-0770.

With cremations as part of cremation services offered in Cleveland, OH, important paperwork will be needed through the funeral process and after the funeral is over. All of this paperwork should be kept in one place and the person handling everything should know where it is and have complete access to it.

When a family is grieving over the loss of someone they love, they will not have enough clarity to think of everything they will need to take care of funeral arrangements and take care of their loved one’s affairs afterward. If you take care of making sure all of these are together now, then it will make it a lot easier for your family when you die.

If you are the executor of your loved one’s estate, you will need to get two different documents to fulfill your responsibilities.

One document is a certified death certificate. You should ask for at least 20 in your meeting with the funeral home director (you can also get more later if you need them) if the estate is small. Larger estates may need more.

The second document you will likely need to execute the estate is an Employer Identification Number (EIN). This document makes the estate of your loved one a legal entity that can pay outstanding bills, pay funeral expenses, and distribute assets to the estate’s heirs.

You will also need identification papers and personal papers. For identification, you will need a birth certificate, citizenship papers, social security card, driver’s license, and passport (if applicable). The personal papers you will need include a marriage certificate, divorce/annulment papers, prenuptial agreements, military discharge papers, and birth and death certificates (if applicable) for the rest of the immediate family.

You may not need all the personal papers, but it’s good to have them in case you do. Make sure to keep your loved one’s purse or wallet (if they died some place other than home) so you have their driver’s license. In hospitals, hospice houses, assisted living facilities, and nursing homes, these should be among the effects of your loved one that are given to you after they die.

To make funeral arrangements according to your deceased loved one’s wishes, you will need any documentation they left that gave instructions for their funeral. You will also need biographical information for the obituary, and you will need contact information for anyone who needs to know that your loved one has died (don’t forget employers, if your loved one was not retired and still working).

There are some other papers that you’ll need at various times before and after your loved one dies. Before death, you will need your loved one’s durable power of attorney, living will, durable healthcare power of attorney, and organ donation papers. Without these, you will not be able to handle your loved one’s affairs if they are unable to do so themselves.

After your loved one has died, you will need either their will or revocable trust to execute the estate according to their wishes.

You will also need your loved one’s financial information. This can include bank accounts, investments, insurance policies, retirement accounts, pensions, payable on death accounts, and income tax returns.

For more information about cremation services in Cleveland, OH, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit our funeral home at 25900 Emery Road, Warrensville Heights, OH 44123, or you can call us today at (216) 831-7906.

After cremations as part of the cremation services offered in Shaker Heights, OH, whoever you’ve designated to take care of your final affairs should have access to your will or revocable trust (this will automatically transfer to them upon your death), any life and burial insurance policies you have, and access to your bank accounts and other financial accounts.

However, there is one other area of your life that you need to make sure your executor has, and that is all the login information (usernames and passwords) for everything you do digitally. Most of us have a gazillion of these. They include logins for digital devices, wireless routers, logins for online banking and other financial services, logins for streaming services, logins for credit card companies, logins for taxing filing sites, logins for airlines, and logins for online shopping sites.

You may also have social media logins for services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. If you blog online, then you have a login for that as well.

We need a quick note about using face recognition or fingerprints to log in to your digital devices instead of a password. While this may be a very good way to secure your digital devices, it’s important to remember that faces and fingerprints are unique for each person, so no one else will be able to access devices where you have this as your login method after you die.

Almost every online password is now required to be at least eight characters, using capital letters, numbers, and special characters. Because different sites use different ways to login – for example, some require a username, while others require an email address – there is no way to standardize all our online logins to be the same.

Even if that was possible, though, it would be a huge security risk, because if someone was able to hack into one account, they could potentially hack every single online account you have.

We all have different strategies for keeping up with all these logins. Many people use free password managers on their digital devices to store all this login information (however, there’s a login for the password manager too). Other people store this information in a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet.

One of the potential problems with password managers on your computer is that no one will be able to access it because they don’t have the administrator password to access the program. Additionally, if the computer crashes, then all your login information is completely inaccessible.

The Word document or Excel spreadsheet is the best way to keep up with your logins and to update them when they change, because you can keep a current copy – printed or on flash drive – with your important papers (replace it when the document changes), so that all your digital information is available to the person you’ve chosen to take care of your final affairs.

Keep your current login document stored on flash drive, not the digital device you primarily use. Label the flash drive and keep it where your executor can easily access it in case you forget to print or provide a current copy to include in your important papers.

For more information about cremation services in Shaker Heights, OH, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit our funeral home at 25900 Emery Road, Warrensville Heights, OH 44123, or you can call us today at (216) 831-7906.

Guidance on who qualifies as next of kin is part of the cremations services in Warrensville Heights, OH that are offered. While we tend to think of next of kin as a colloquial phrase, it is actually a legal phrase in the United States. It determines who can make decisions for someone at the end of life if they don’t have a living will or other advance directives in place and who is in line for legal duties and inheritances if the person doesn’t have a will or living trust in place.

Generally, next of kin refers to someone’s closest blood relatives, which can include both immediate family and extended family, depending on who is alive that is the closest relative. Next of kin has significant legal meaning for end of live medical decision and for the rights of inheritance.

If you create a will, then you designate who executes it and who the beneficiaries of your estate – property, financial assets, and personal belongings – will be and how much of the estate each beneficiary receives.

However, if some dies intestate – without a will – then the legal statutes of Ohio will determine who your next of kin are when deciding on the beneficiaries of your estate. This may mean that things you promised to certain people won’t be done, because there’s no legal document with those instructions.

When determining the line of inheritance for next of kin, a surviving spouse and children are first. The surviving spouse will get most of the estate and the rest will be split among the children.

However, if you do not have a surviving spouse or children (biological or adopted), there is an order in which next of kin is decided.

If your parents are still living, they will be first in the order. Next will be any siblings that survive you. Grandchildren are next in line, followed by your grandparents, if they are still alive. Next are nieces and nephews, then aunts and uncles. Finally, great-grandchildren and great-grandparents, they’re still living, are in the line of inheritance.

Once the next of kin have been identified, then the state will appoint an administrator to distribute the estate. Most of the time, the administrator is a blood relative. If a spouse or children survive you, one of them will most likely be appointed as the administrator of your estate.

Next of kin comes into play when you are unable to make medical decisions for yourself, such as in the case of a coma or dementia. If you don’t have a health care directive that appoints someone as your medical proxy, then the closest blood relative will be designated as your medical representative.

The order for making medical decisions for you is your spouse, your adult children (for minor children, parents or guardians are first), your parents, if they are living, and a line of succession similar to that if you die without a will.

To ensure that your wishes for medical care, end of life decisions, and your estate are handled and carried out the way you want, you should get a health care directive (living will, DNR, etc.) appointing the person you want to make medical decisions for you if you are unable and what you want and done want done to prolong life if you are dying. You should also have a will or a revocable trust drawn up with the distribution of your estate spelled out. Both of these documents are legal with just your signature and a date, but you should try to get your will or revocable trust witnessed and notarized.

For more guidance on qualifications for next of kin after cremations services in Warrensville Heights, OH, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit our funeral home at 25900 Emery Road, Warrensville Heights, OH 44123, or you can call us today at (216) 831-7906.

After cremations as part of Cleveland, OH cremation services, the grieving process begins for the family members who have lost a loved one. When these family members are friends or extended family, we immediately are moved to comfort and support them, but we don’t often know if we should say anything, or if we do, what would be the right thing to say.

In reality, sometimes more silence than words is okay if we don’t know what to say and we’re afraid that we might say the wrong thing. But we can acknowledge the loss of a loved one and we can express our sympathy to our grieving friends and extended family members.

When someone is grieving, they may simply want to talk about their loss and their grief (some people don’t want to and we should respect that as well). They are not looking for advice or wisdom or counsel. They just need to be able to express to another person how they are feeling. We can show our hearts in this case by just listening with an empathetic ear.

Many of the feelings of loss and grief are complicated. They can range from anger to sorrow to fear and to regret. It can be hard to hear grief out loud, and we might be tempted to try to counter what our grieving friend or extended family member is saying by, in essence, disagreeing with how they feel and what they are saying. This can make things so much worse.

What we need to do instead is step back and put ourselves in their shoes. What would we want someone to say to us if we were in the throes of grief and emotional turmoil? Something kind and understanding that comes from an empathetic and gentle heart would sooth our wounds of loss instead of aggravating them.

Another way to show and speak from our hearts is not to disappear after a few weeks of supporting and consoling our grieving friends or extended relatives. One way to disappear is not making the time to check in with them regularly to see how they’re doing. They may not be up to in-person visits, but we can text or call them to let them know we care about them.

Another way to disappear is more subtle, but also much more hurtful. This disappearance consists of being impatient with our friends’ or extended relatives’ grief by essentially telling them that it’s time to move on and get over it. If you want to damage, or possibly destroy, a relationship, this is a sure way to begin the process.

Grieving takes time, and no two people grieve openly – grief, in some shape or form, lasts the rest of ife – the exact same way or for the same amount of time. It takes a lot of patience sometimes to listen to some of our friends and extended family members say the same things and express the same feelings over and over for an extended period of time.

But this is a part of healing and we need to affirm the validity that they are feeling these things and give them a safe and supportive environment to work out their grieving, no matter how long it takes. That’s friendship and that’s love.

For more information about grief resources as part of Cleveland, OH cremation services, our compassionate and experienced team at E. F. Boyd & Son Funeral Home is here to help. You can visit our funeral home at 2165 E. 89th Street, Cleveland, OH 44106, or you can call us today at (216) 791-0770.