DESIGNATION OF HEALTH CARE SURROGATE
Florida provides a statutory form for naming the person you want making health-care decisions if you cannot make them yourself. You can also authorize your surrogate to receive your health information immediately and, if you choose, give the surrogate authority to make health-care decisions while you still have capacity. Your own decisions continue to control while you are capable of making them.

OPEN FLORIDA HEALTH CARE SURROGATE FORM ↗

The designation is signed and dated by you and signed by two witnesses. Florida places additional restrictions on who may serve as a witness.

LIVING WILL
Florida separately provides a statutory Living Will for recording your wishes concerning life-prolonging procedures if you are incapacitated with a terminal condition, end-stage condition or persistent vegetative state.

OPEN FLORIDA LIVING WILL ↗

The Living Will and Health Care Surrogate designation do different jobs. The Living Will records what you want; the surrogate designation names the person who can speak and act for you.

DO NOT RESUSCITATE ORDER / DNRO
Florida's DNRO is a medical order for people who do not want resuscitation in the event of respiratory or cardiac arrest. It is not a substitute for your Living Will or Health Care Surrogate designation.

OPEN FLORIDA DNRO INFORMATION & FORM ↗

Florida's current DNRO is DH Form 1896. It must be printed with a full-page yellow background or on yellow paper to be valid for the purpose for which the state form is designed. It must be signed by the patient or representative and the appropriate Florida health-care professional. It does not require witnesses or notarization.

WRITTEN DIRECTIONS FOR FINAL DISPOSITION
Florida gives your own written directions first priority in deciding what happens to your body. Under Florida law, the decedent is the first legally authorized person when the decedent left written inter vivos authorizations and directions.

Florida does not provide an ordinary civilian statutory disposition form comparable to those supplied by several other states. The Anarchiste Death Project therefore provides a Florida document for putting those directions clearly in writing.

Florida law does not prescribe a witness or notarization procedure for ordinary written inter vivos disposition directions under §497.005(43). The ADP form uses a signature, date and additional proof-of-authenticity measures to create a clear record of your identity and intent. Those safeguards should not be mistaken for statutory execution requirements that Florida itself does not impose.

READ FLORIDA'S DISPOSITION PRIORITY LAW ↗

CHOSEN FAMILY
Put your wishes in writing while you are alive and identify the person you trust to communicate and carry them out. Florida does not give an ordinary civilian the same simple statutory disposition-agent appointment found in states such as Delaware or Georgia, so do not rely on a verbal understanding alone.

Without your own written directions, Florida's statutory hierarchy moves through the people recognized by law, including a surviving spouse and family members.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY
Leave precise written instructions for your name, gender, pronouns, clothing, bodily presentation, photographs, obituary language, privacy, chosen family, who may care for your body and who you want involved after your death.

Keep this with your Florida Written Directions for Final Disposition so the people dealing with your death can find the legal directions and the intimate instructions together.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE
Record your wishes for washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, funeral or no funeral, ceremony, clothing, photographs and the people you want involved.

FUNERAL & DISPOSITION ADMINISTRATION
Florida uses a regulated funeral and direct-disposition system. The funeral director, direct disposer or other authorized professional handling final disposition works within Florida's death-registration and burial-transit-permit process.

A burial-transit permit is required before final disposition. Professional funeral practice, cremation and direct disposition are regulated under Florida law.

EMBALMING
Embalming is not automatically authorized merely because someone has died. A Florida funeral licensee must obtain permission from a legally authorized person before embalming.

Florida also regulates the handling, refrigeration, storage and transportation of bodies by licensed establishments. If avoiding embalming matters to you, put that instruction in writing and make sure the people arranging your disposition know it immediately.

BURIAL & NATURAL BURIAL
LEGAL.
Florida does not impose a universal state requirement that every burial use embalming, a conventional casket or burial vault. The cemetery or burial place may impose its own requirements.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL
LEGAL WITH REQUIREMENTS.
Florida expressly recognizes family cemeteries of less than two acres that do not sell burial spaces or burial merchandise and exempts them from much of the state's commercial cemetery licensing structure.

That exemption does not make the burial ground invisible to the rest of the law. A burial-transit permit is still required, burial records and other applicable requirements still matter, and local zoning or land-use rules may apply. Check the actual parcel before establishing a family burial ground.

READ FLORIDA FAMILY CEMETERY LAW ↗

CREMATION
LEGAL.
Florida regulates crematories and direct disposition. A cremation cannot be performed until a legally authorized person gives written authorization.

READ FLORIDA CREMATION LAW ↗

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION
NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED.
Florida's current deathcare framework regulates cremation and crematory facilities but does not presently provide an authorization or licensing pathway for alkaline hydrolysis.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING
NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED.
Natural organic reduction appeared in proposed Florida legislation in 2026, but that proposed authorization did not become part of the operative Florida deathcare framework. Do not treat the proposed bill language as current law.

BURIAL AT SEA
LEGAL UNDER FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS.
Whole-body and cremated-remains burial at sea are governed by the federal EPA general permit. Florida's ordinary death-registration, custody and disposition requirements still apply before the body or remains enter the federal ocean-disposition process.

OPEN EPA BURIAL AT SEA REQUIREMENTS ↗

ORGAN & TISSUE DONATION
Florida law allows anatomical gifts through several mechanisms, including donor registration and a driver's license or identification card. Keep organ and tissue donation separate in your planning from

OPEN DONATE LIFE FLORIDA ↗

FLORIDA POWER OF ATTORNEY
Florida has a detailed statutory Power of Attorney system for financial, property and other affairs. A Florida Power of Attorney must be signed by the principal, signed by two subscribing witnesses and acknowledged before a notary public or another officer authorized by Florida law.

READ FLORIDA POWER OF ATTORNEY LAW ↗

Florida does not give us a single general state-issued fillable financial Power of Attorney that should be treated as the official universal form. Because a Power of Attorney can transfer extensive financial and property authority, use a document drafted for Florida law rather than improvising one from a generic internet template.

LAST WILL & TESTAMENT
A will can govern property distribution, nominate a personal representative and address other testamentary matters. It does not replace your Health Care Surrogate designation, Living Will or your written directions concerning final disposition.

DIGITAL LIFE & ACCESS
Decide what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, communications, photographs, archives, websites, social media, domains and creative work, and who should be able to deal with them.

Florida's Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets law lets you give legally relevant directions through a platform's online legacy or access tool. Where the platform provides such a tool and you use it in the manner required by the statute, that direction can override a contrary direction in a will, trust, Power of Attorney or other record.

If you have not used an online tool, Florida allows digital-asset directions to be placed in a will, trust, Power of Attorney or other record. Access to the actual content of electronic communications requires especially careful drafting: an agent acting under a Power of Attorney needs express authority over that content.

READ FLORIDA FIDUCIARY ACCESS TO DIGITAL ASSETS LAW ↗

GEORGIA ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR HEALTH CARE
Georgia uses a combined Advance Directive for Health Care. It lets you name a health-care agent, record your treatment preferences and nominate the person you would want appointed as guardian if a court later determines that a guardian is necessary.

OPEN GEORGIA ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR HEALTH CARE ↗

Georgia's Advance Directive must be signed by you and two adult witnesses. Witness qualifications and restrictions apply. The Georgia Advance Directive replaced the state's former Living Will and Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care as the standard advance-planning document.

POLST
Georgia's Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment form contains medical orders concerning current treatment. It is intended for people whose health circumstances make portable medical orders appropriate and does not replace an Advance Directive.

OPEN GEORGIA POLST INFORMATION & FORM ↗

GEORGIA AFFIDAVIT TO CONTROL DISPOSITION OF REMAINS
Georgia lets you name another person to control what happens to your body after death. The statute itself supplies the affidavit language. You may also attach specific lawful directions concerning the disposition of your remains.

OPEN GEORGIA STATUTORY DISPOSITION AFFIDAVIT ↗

The affidavit is executed before a notary public. Georgia does not require separate witnesses for this statutory affidavit. If you attach specific disposition directions, the person you designate must substantially comply with them when the directions are lawful and sufficient resources are available.

CHOSEN FAMILY
Georgia's disposition affidavit is a particularly useful protection when the person you trust is a partner, friend or other chosen person rather than your legal next of kin. A properly designated disposition agent ranks ahead of a surviving spouse in Georgia's statutory hierarchy.

Georgia places your health-care agent even higher in the disposition hierarchy. If you name different people in your Advance Directive and disposition affidavit, make sure you understand the priority created by Georgia law and avoid leaving conflicting instructions.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY
Use Georgia's statutory disposition affidavit to put the person you trust in legal control, then leave precise written instructions for your name, gender, pronouns, clothing, bodily presentation, photographs, obituary language, privacy, chosen family, who may care for your body and who you want involved after your death.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE
Record your wishes for washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, funeral or no funeral, ceremony, clothing, photographs and the people you want involved.

Keep these instructions with your Advance Directive and disposition affidavit, especially if you want the people close to you to participate directly in caring for your body.

EMBALMING
NOT GENERALLY REQUIRED.
Georgia does not legally require embalming as a universal condition of burial or disposition. Refrigeration can be used instead, and direct burial or direct cremation does not require preservation.

OPEN GEORGIA FUNERAL & CEMETERY RIGHTS INFORMATION ↗

FUNERAL & BODY CARE
Georgia regulates professional funeral directing, embalming, funeral establishments, crematories and organic human reduction facilities. Those professional licensing rules do not mean that the people close to you are forbidden from participating in washing, dressing, shrouding, vigil, ceremony and other intimate care.

BURIAL & NATURAL BURIAL
LEGAL.
Georgia does not require embalming for burial. State law also does not require burial vaults or grave liners. A cemetery or particular burial place may impose its own requirements.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL
LEGAL WITH A LOCAL PERMIT + STATE REQUIREMENTS.
Georgia changed its family-burial law effective July 1, 2026. A new family burial plot established on or after that date requires a permit from the county or municipality where the proposed plot is located.

The statewide requirements include a tract of at least one-half acre, a perpetual-access easement for specified people and the local government, a covenant requiring preservation and maintenance of the burial plot, a registered land survey, location outside a floodplain and at least 100 feet from a water well. Burial rights in the family plot cannot be sold.

The local government may impose additional requirements. Its permit process must at minimum address ownership of the property or the landowner's consent to creation of the family burial plot.

READ GEORGIA'S 2026 FAMILY BURIAL PLOT REQUIREMENTS ↗

CREMATION
LEGAL.
Georgia regulates crematories and the authorization, identification and handling of bodies and cremated remains.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION
LEGAL.
Georgia law expressly includes alkaline hydrolysis within its cremation framework. A Georgia "cremation device" may be a retort, vat or other container in which a body is cremated by traditional flame, alkaline hydrolysis or another method approved by the State Board of Funeral Service.

READ GEORGIA CREMATION & ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS LAW ↗

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING
LEGAL.
Georgia licenses organic human reduction facilities and regulates the processing and handling of organically reduced remains. The State Board of Funeral Service's current organic human reduction facility regulations became effective June 10, 2026.

OPEN GEORGIA ORGANIC HUMAN REDUCTION REGULATIONS ↗

BURIAL AT SEA
LEGAL WITH APPLICABLE FEDERAL & STATE REQUIREMENTS.
Whole-body burial at sea is governed by the federal EPA general permit. Georgia also has specific rules concerning burial at sea of cremated and organically reduced remains.

OPEN EPA BURIAL AT SEA REQUIREMENTS ↗

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION
Georgia maintains an Organ, Eye and Tissue Donor Registry. Registration is available through the Department of Driver Services, DDS online services, participating Department of Natural Resources licensing, Donate Life Georgia and other state-recognized routes.

OPEN GEORGIA ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONOR INFORMATION ↗

GEORGIA STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY
Georgia provides a statutory Power of Attorney form for financial, property and other affairs. It does not authorize your agent to make health-care decisions for you.

OPEN GEORGIA STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY ↗

A Georgia Power of Attorney must be signed by the principal, attested in the principal's presence by one competent witness who is not the agent, and separately attested as required by Georgia law by a notary public or other authorized official. The witness and the official attestor must be different people, and neither may be the agent named in the document.

LAST WILL & TESTAMENT
A will can govern property distribution, nominate an executor and address other testamentary matters. It does not replace your Advance Directive or your Georgia disposition affidavit.

DIGITAL LIFE & ACCESS
Decide what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, communications, photographs, archives, websites, social media, domains and creative work, and who should be able to deal with them.

Georgia has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. If a platform gives you an online legacy or access tool, use it. A direction made through a qualifying online tool can take priority over a contrary direction in a will, trust, Power of Attorney or other record.

If no online direction controls, Georgia lets you authorize or prohibit disclosure of digital assets, including the content of electronic communications, through a will, trust, Power of Attorney or other record. Put the legal authority into the instrument that your fiduciary will actually need to use.

READ GEORGIA DIGITAL ASSETS LAW ↗

HAWAIʻI ADVANCE HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVE
Hawaiʻi provides an official Advance Health Care Directive for naming the person you want making health-care decisions if you cannot make them yourself and recording your own instructions for medical and end-of-life care.

OPEN HAWAIʻI ADVANCE HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVE ↗

The health-care power of attorney portion may be executed using two qualified witnesses or a notarial acknowledgment. Witness restrictions apply. Hawaiʻi's Department of Health currently provides both fillable and printable forms and does not accept electronic signatures.

POLST
Hawaiʻi's Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment form contains immediately actionable medical orders for people whose current medical circumstances make this kind of planning appropriate. It does not replace an Advance Health Care Directive.

OPEN HAWAIʻI POLST INFORMATION & FORM ↗

A Hawaiʻi POLST must be signed by a physician, APRN or physician assistant licensed in Hawaiʻi. Electronic signatures are not accepted. Printing the form on green paper is recommended, but green paper is not stated as a validity requirement.

HAWAIʻI WRITTEN INSTRUMENT TO CONTROL DISPOSITION OF REMAINS
Hawaiʻi lets you name the person who will have the sole right to determine and decide the disposition of your remains and your funeral arrangements. The statute itself provides the written instrument. You may also attach specific directions concerning what you want done with your body.

OPEN HAWAIʻI STATUTORY DISPOSITION FORM ↗

The statutory instrument is signed, dated and notarized. If you want a partner, friend or another chosen person rather than the person who would otherwise have priority under Hawaiʻi law controlling your funeral and disposition, name that person here.

YOUR OWN DISPOSITION DIRECTIONS
Hawaiʻi separately lets you leave written directions concerning the location, manner and conditions of your disposition. These directions may appear in a testamentary document, preneed contract or another written document that is signed and notarized.

READ HAWAIʻI DISPOSITION-DIRECTIONS LAW ↗

Valid written directions concerning your disposition take precedence over the wishes or directions of another person, subject to Hawaiʻi law.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY
Use Hawaiʻi's statutory disposition instrument to put the person you trust in legal control, then leave precise written instructions for your name, gender, pronouns, clothing, bodily presentation, photographs, obituary language, privacy, chosen family, who may care for your body and who you want involved after your death.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE
Record your wishes for washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, funeral or no funeral, ceremony, clothing, photographs and the people you want involved.

Keep these instructions with your Hawaiʻi disposition instrument and give copies to the person you have chosen to control your funeral and disposition.

BODY PRESERVATION & THE 30-HOUR RULE
Hawaiʻi has a specific time rule for handling an unembalmed body. When the condition of the body permits, a dead human body must ordinarily be embalmed, cremated or buried within 30 hours after death. Related rules apply when a body has been released from the coroner, medical examiner or county authorities.

Embalming is therefore not the only option. Burial or cremation within the applicable period can satisfy the rule. If a long home vigil or delayed natural burial matters to you, this is a Hawaiʻi rule to investigate and plan around in advance.

BURIAL & NATURAL BURIAL
LEGAL.
Hawaiʻi permits ground burial and does not universally require embalming before burial. Its body-preservation rule expressly allows timely burial as an alternative to embalming. The cemetery or burial place may impose its own requirements.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL
EXPRESSLY LEGAL WITH STATUTORY CONDITIONS.
Hawaiʻi expressly recognizes family burial plots on residential or agricultural property. Owners who use or intend to use their property for burial of family members are exempt from the ordinary cemetery chapter when the statutory conditions are met.

Burial plots may be offered only to family members and cannot be sold or transferred separately from all or a substantial portion of the property. Later disinterment remains governed by Hawaiʻi law. Applicable burial, health and land-use requirements still need to be checked for the actual property.

READ HAWAIʻI FAMILY BURIAL PLOT LAW, §441-5.5 ↗

CREMATION
LEGAL.
Hawaiʻi regulates cremation and the handling and disposition of cremated remains.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / WATER CREMATION
LEGAL.
Hawaiʻi law recognizes water cremation within its deathcare framework. Water cremation is the state's terminology for disposition by alkaline hydrolysis.

READ HAWAIʻI DISPOSITION DEFINITIONS ↗

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING
NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED.
Hawaiʻi has considered legislation that would authorize natural organic reduction, but that proposed legislation has not become an operative natural-organic-reduction framework. Do not treat proposed bill language as current law.

BURIAL AT SEA
LEGAL WITH APPLICABLE FEDERAL & STATE REQUIREMENTS.
Whole-body burial at sea is governed by the federal EPA general permit. Hawaiʻi also regulates activities affecting state waters, so the rules for the particular form and location of disposition should be checked before proceeding.

OPEN EPA BURIAL AT SEA REQUIREMENTS ↗

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION
Hawaiʻi residents can register as organ and tissue donors through the state's donor-registration system, including through driver's license and state identification processes. Legacy of Life Hawaiʻi provides the current registration pathway and donation information.

OPEN HAWAIʻI ORGAN & TISSUE DONOR REGISTRATION ↗

NEW DONOR ENROLLMENT IS CURRENTLY PAUSED.

STATE OF HAWAIʻI STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY
Hawaiʻi provides a statutory Power of Attorney form for property, money, banking, business, taxes and other financial affairs. It does not authorize your agent to make health-care decisions for you.

OPEN HAWAIʻI STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY ↗

Hawaiʻi's statutory form includes a Signature and Acknowledgment section with a notarial certificate. Because this document can give another person extensive authority over your property and money, read the powers carefully before signing.

LAST WILL & TESTAMENT
A will can govern property distribution, nominate a personal representative and address other testamentary matters. It does not replace your Advance Health Care Directive or your Hawaiʻi disposition instrument.

DIGITAL LIFE & ACCESS
Decide what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, communications, photographs, archives, websites, social media, domains and creative work, and who should be able to deal with them.

Hawaiʻi has adopted the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. Where a platform provides an online legacy or access tool, use it to record your instructions. If no controlling online direction exists, digital-asset authority can be addressed in a will, trust, Power of Attorney or other record.

Put legal access authority into the estate or Power of Attorney documents your fiduciary will actually need to use. Keep your practical account inventory, archive instructions, privacy wishes and passwords or access information separately and securely.

IDAHO ADVANCE DIRECTIVE

Idaho combines its Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare and Living Will in one Advance Directive. Use it to name the person who will make healthcare decisions if you cannot speak for yourself and to record your choices about life-sustaining treatment and other medical care.

To make it valid: Sign it. Idaho does not require the Advance Directive to be notarized or signed by a medical provider.

You may also name alternate healthcare agents. Give copies to your agent, alternates and healthcare providers.

IDAHO ADVANCE DIRECTIVE →

IDAHO HEALTHCARE DIRECTIVE REGISTRY

Idaho maintains a secure registry where you can create, upload, store and share your Advance Directive. Registration is useful because your directive can remain accessible to the people and healthcare providers who may need it.

HEALTHCARE DIRECTIVE REGISTRY →

PHYSICIAN ORDERS FOR SCOPE OF TREATMENT · POST

POST is for people with serious illness or approaching the end of life. It contains current medical orders and complements rather than replaces your Advance Directive. It must be completed and signed with a healthcare provider.

Idaho currently makes POST available through healthcare providers and the Healthcare Directive Registry.

IDAHO POST INFORMATION →

IDAHO DESIGNATION & DIRECTIONS FOR DISPOSITION OF REMAINS

Idaho lets you place a person you choose at the top of the legal hierarchy controlling your body after death. This is especially important if you want a partner, friend or other chosen person to have authority instead of the relatives Idaho would otherwise select.

Idaho Code § 54-1142 recognizes a person designated in a written document executed by the decedent and acknowledged in the manner required for instruments conveying real property. The document may also contain limitations, restrictions or directions governing that person's authority.

To make it valid: Complete the designation and acknowledge it before a notary. Name an alternate as well. Give copies to the people you appoint and keep another with your death-planning papers.

If you do nothing: Idaho's statutory priority order controls. Your chosen person does not move ahead of spouse or blood relatives merely because they know your wishes.

DOWNLOAD ADP IDAHO DISPOSITION FORM →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record the name, pronouns, gender and bodily presentation you want used after death, who may wash, dress or shroud you, who may see your body, how relationships should be described, what may appear in an obituary or memorial, what should remain private, and who should have no part in your care or ceremony.

In Idaho: these personal instructions are strongest when the person you trust has actual legal authority over disposition. Complete the Idaho Designation & Directions for Disposition of Remains above as well. The ADP identity document records your wishes; the Idaho designation puts your chosen person in the legal position to carry them out.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record what you want to happen to your body between death and final disposition: washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, ceremony, funeral or no funeral, embalming preferences and the people you want involved.

Idaho does not require every family to surrender care of the dead to a funeral home. Family-directed care and home vigils are possible. Embalming is not a universal requirement merely because death has occurred.

If your body will be transported by common carrier or unusual circumstances apply, additional preservation or transportation requirements may enter. Death registration, permits and any coroner involvement still have to be handled.

Pair these wishes with your Idaho disposition designation when you want a particular person to control what happens after death.

DOWNLOAD AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

NATURAL / GREEN BURIAL

LEGAL. Idaho does not impose a universal requirement that every body be embalmed or placed in a conventional vault before burial. A particular cemetery may impose its own rules.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL

LEGAL, SUBJECT TO LOCAL REQUIREMENTS. Idaho does not categorically prohibit burial on private property. Check the county and municipality governing the actual parcel before establishing the grave. Local zoning, land-use and other site-specific rules can matter.

CREMATION

LEGAL. Cremation operates through Idaho's regulated crematory system.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED. Idaho's current mortuary law defines cremation through a crematory containing retorts and does not establish a separate human alkaline-hydrolysis authorization or licensing pathway.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED. Idaho does not currently provide the statutory and regulatory pathway necessary for human natural organic reduction.

BURIAL AT SEA

LEGAL WITH MATERIAL LIMITATIONS. Ocean burial is governed primarily by federal EPA requirements. Idaho death-registration and transport requirements still apply before the body leaves the state for final disposition.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Idaho maintains the Yes Idaho! Organ, Eye and Tissue Donor Registry. Registering your decision is different from donating your whole body to an anatomical program.

YES IDAHO! DONOR REGISTRY →

The program generally cannot accept donations much beyond approximately 250 miles from Pocatello. Organ removal other than the eyes can also prevent acceptance into the program.

IDAHO STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY

Idaho provides a statutory financial and property Power of Attorney. It lets you appoint an agent to act for you concerning money and property and may continue during incapacity.

This is not your healthcare document. Medical authority belongs in the Idaho Advance Directive above.

Idaho's statutory form also permits successor agents and special instructions. The completed POA must be acknowledged before a notary.

IDAHO STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY →

DIGITAL LIFE

Decide what happens to your accounts, devices, photographs, correspondence, websites, domains, cloud storage, creative work and private archives. Record what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or destroyed, and who should be trusted with access.

Idaho has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. The law creates mechanisms for fiduciary access, but it does not replace your own practical instructions about what your digital life contains or what you want done with it.

Where a service offers its own legacy or online account-management tool, complete that as well. Platform-level directions can carry legal significance under the digital-assets framework.

DOWNLOAD DIGITAL LIFE →

ILLINOIS POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE

Use Illinois's Health Care Power of Attorney to choose the person who will make healthcare decisions for you if you cannot make them yourself. You may give your agent detailed instructions and name a successor agent.

Illinois gives a healthcare agent broad authority. The statutory framework can also cover anatomical gifts, autopsy and disposition of remains unless you restrict that authority.

To make it valid: Sign the form in front of one qualified witness who also signs it. Your healthcare professional or provider cannot serve as your healthcare agent.

ILLINOIS ADVANCE DIRECTIVES & HEALTH CARE POA →

ILLINOIS LIVING WILL

Illinois also provides a separate Living Will for instructions concerning death-delaying procedures if you have a terminal condition and cannot state your wishes yourself.

ILLINOIS LIVING WILL →

MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT PREFERENCE DECLARATION

Illinois has a separate statutory declaration for mental-health treatment. It can record preferences concerning psychotropic medication, electroconvulsive treatment and admission to a mental-health facility and can name an attorney-in-fact for these decisions.

ILLINOIS MENTAL HEALTH DECLARATION →

ILLINOIS POLST

POLST is a medical order for people with serious illness or frailty whose current treatment preferences need to travel with them across care settings. It addresses CPR and other life-sustaining treatment and does not replace your Health Care Power of Attorney.

ILLINOIS POLST INFORMATION & FORM →

APPOINTMENT OF AGENT TO CONTROL DISPOSITION OF REMAINS

Illinois lets you put a person you choose in control of what happens to your body after death. That person can take priority over the spouse, adult children, parents and other relatives who would otherwise receive authority under Illinois's default hierarchy.

Illinois law permits written directions for disposition and permits you to designate an agent through a qualifying written instrument. Your directions may address burial, cremation, ceremonies and other matters concerning your remains.

To make the standalone disposition instrument valid: Complete it, sign it and have it notarized.

Illinois also recognizes disposition authority given through certain other instruments, including a qualifying Health Care Power of Attorney.

ILLINOIS DISPOSITION OF REMAINS ACT & STATUTORY FORM →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Illinois gives unusually strong legal recognition to written identity instructions after death.

Your written disposition directions may expressly include instructions about gender identity, appearance, chosen name and gender pronouns. Illinois protects these directions regardless of whether you obtained a legal name change, changed the gender marker on identification documents, or received transition-related medical treatment.

Use the ADP document to record the fuller human terrain: your name and pronouns, clothing and bodily presentation, photographs, obituary language, relationships, chosen family, who may see or care for your body, who should participate in ceremony, what should remain private, and who should have no part in any of it.

Pair it with an Illinois disposition instrument naming the person you trust. The Illinois document gives that person legal authority; the ADP document gives them the detail necessary to protect you.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record how you want your body cared for between death and final disposition: washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, ceremony, funeral or no funeral, embalming preferences, and the people you want present and involved.

Embalming is not universally required in Illinois. Illinois law specifically treats claims that embalming, a cremation casket, or an outer burial container are legally required when they are not as potentially false or misleading representations by funeral professionals.

Illinois does regulate professional funeral directing, removal and transportation of human remains. Do not assume that family participation in washing, dressing, shrouding or vigil eliminates the formal requirements governing removal, death registration, transport and final disposition.

Pair these instructions with your Illinois disposition appointment so the person you trust has legal authority when decisions have to be made.

DOWNLOAD AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

NATURAL / GREEN BURIAL

LEGAL. Illinois does not impose a universal requirement that every body be embalmed or that every burial use an outer burial container. A particular cemetery may establish its own lawful container requirements.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL

LEGAL THROUGH ILLINOIS'S FAMILY BURYING-GROUND FRAMEWORK. Illinois law expressly recognizes a family burying ground as a cemetery in which burial is restricted to qualifying family members and burial rights are not sold to the public.

Family burying grounds receive substantial exemptions from Illinois's commercial cemetery licensing system, but establishing or using one can still involve cemetery-status, local land-use, recording and property requirements. Check the rules governing the actual parcel before burial.

CREMATION

LEGAL. Illinois regulates cremation through licensed crematory authorities. A cremation permit and proper authorization are required, and ordinarily at least 24 hours must pass after death before cremation.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

LEGAL. Illinois expressly includes alkaline hydrolysis within its statutory definition of cremation. Illinois law recognizes both heat-and-flame cremation and hydrolysis as regulated cremation processes.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED. Illinois considered legislation in 2026 that would create a licensing and regulatory system for natural organic reduction. That proposal has not become operative Illinois law.

BURIAL AT SEA

LEGAL UNDER FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS. The actual ocean burial is governed primarily by federal EPA law. Illinois death-registration, authorization and transportation requirements still apply before the body leaves for final disposition.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Illinois maintains a First-Person Consent Organ/Tissue Donor Registry. For an adult registrant, the recorded donation decision is legally binding and does not require additional family consent.

ILLINOIS ORGAN/TISSUE DONOR REGISTRY →

Illinois Whole-body donation is different from organ and tissue donation and requires its own arrangements.

Acceptance at death can depend on the circumstances and needs of the program. Keep a backup disposition plan even when you have preregistered.

ANATOMICAL GIFT ASSOCIATION OF ILLINOIS →

ILLINOIS STATUTORY SHORT FORM POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR PROPERTY

Illinois provides a statutory property Power of Attorney for financial and property matters. Use it to appoint an agent to handle the powers you grant concerning money, property and other financial affairs.

This is separate from your Health Care Power of Attorney.

The Illinois statutory form contains important notices to both the person signing and the agent and includes a notarized acknowledgment. Use the current statutory form rather than an abbreviated homemade version.

ILLINOIS STATUTORY PROPERTY POWER OF ATTORNEY →

DIGITAL LIFE

Decide what happens to your accounts, devices, photographs, correspondence, websites, domains, cloud storage, creative work and private archives. Record what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or destroyed and who should be trusted with access.

Illinois has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It allows you to give legally meaningful directions concerning disclosure of digital assets through an online tool or through a will, trust, power of attorney or other record.

If a platform provides its own legacy or online account-management tool, complete it. Under Illinois law, a valid direction made through such a tool can override a contrary direction in another estate-planning document.

The ADP Digital Life document serves the practical side: what exists, who should receive it, what should disappear, what must be preserved, and where the necessary access information can be found.

DOWNLOAD DIGITAL LIFE →

INDIANA ADVANCE DIRECTIVE & HEALTH CARE REPRESENTATIVE

Indiana lets you name a Health Care Representative to make healthcare decisions if you cannot make or communicate them yourself. You can also record your treatment wishes, values and end-of-life preferences.

Indiana does not require one mandatory government form. An advance directive is valid when it satisfies current Indiana law. Indiana Disability Rights publishes a current fillable Health Care Representative form, and the Indiana Department of Health maintains a resource center with current sample forms.

To make a written advance directive valid: follow the execution instructions on the current form. Indiana's current framework permits execution using two qualified adult witnesses or a notarial officer, depending on the directive used.

Name a backup representative as well, and give copies to the people you appoint and to your healthcare providers.

INDIANA ADVANCE DIRECTIVE RESOURCES & FORMS →

PHYSICIAN ORDERS FOR SCOPE OF TREATMENT · POST

Indiana POST is a medical order for people whose current medical condition makes decisions about CPR and other life-sustaining treatment immediately relevant. It does not replace your Advance Directive.

The POST must be completed according to Indiana's medical-order requirements and signed by the treating physician, advanced practice registered nurse, or physician assistant.

INDIANA POST INFORMATION & OFFICIAL FORM →

INDIANA FUNERAL PLANNING DECLARATION

Indiana gives you a dedicated legal instrument for deciding who controls your funeral and the disposition of your body after death.

The Funeral Planning Declaration lets you name a designee and alternate designee, choose burial or cremation, direct what happens to cremated remains, give instructions about funeral services and ceremonies, and leave additional directions.

This is especially useful when the person you trust is a partner, friend or other chosen person rather than the relative who might otherwise receive authority after your death.

To make it valid: the declaration must be written, dated and signed in the presence of two qualified adult witnesses. The witnesses must satisfy Indiana's statutory eligibility rules.

Use the Indiana declaration itself rather than replacing it with a homemade disposition form.

INDIANA FUNERAL PLANNING DECLARATION & LAW →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record the name, pronouns, gender and bodily presentation you want used after death, who may wash, dress or shroud you, who may see your body, how relationships should be described, what may appear in an obituary or memorial, what should remain private, and who should have no part in your care or ceremony.

Indiana's Funeral Planning Declaration gives your chosen designee authority over funeral and disposition decisions and provides space for ceremonial and additional instructions. Use the ADP document for the fuller personal detail the statutory declaration was not designed to hold.

Pair the two documents. The Indiana declaration places your chosen person in authority; the ADP document tells them how you want that authority used.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record what you want to happen to your body between death and final disposition: washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, ceremony, funeral or no funeral, embalming preferences, and the people you want present and involved.

Embalming is not universally required merely because someone has died in Indiana.

Indiana does, however, regulate the formal funeral and disposition process. The state's permit system requires funeral-director involvement in the formal administration of disposition. Family and chosen family can still participate in personal care, vigil and ceremony, but do not assume that participation replaces Indiana's death-registration and permit requirements.

Pair these wishes with the Indiana Funeral Planning Declaration so the person you trust has the legal authority to carry them forward.

DOWNLOAD AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

NATURAL / GREEN BURIAL

LEGAL. Indiana does not impose a universal requirement that every body be embalmed before burial, and our research found no universal statewide requirement that every burial use a conventional casket or concrete vault. A particular cemetery may impose its own rules.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL

LEGAL THROUGH A FAMILY-CEMETERY FRAMEWORK, SUBJECT TO LOCAL REQUIREMENTS. Indiana expressly contemplates establishment of family cemeteries on private land.

Before establishing one, check the city, town or county requirements governing the actual parcel and complete Indiana's death-registration and disposition requirements. Once a burial ground exists, Indiana also gives cemeteries and burial grounds substantial protection against later disturbance.

INDIANA FAMILY CEMETERY LAW & GUIDANCE →

CREMATION

LEGAL. Indiana regulates cremation and crematories under its funeral and cemetery laws.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED. Indiana does not currently provide the human-remains authorization and regulatory pathway necessary for alkaline hydrolysis. Proposals to add it to Indiana's deathcare law have not become operative law.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED. Indiana has considered legislation that would create authority for natural organic reduction, but the proposed framework has not become current Indiana law.

BURIAL AT SEA

LEGAL UNDER FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS. Ocean burial itself is governed primarily by federal EPA rules. Indiana's death-registration, permit and transportation requirements still apply before the body leaves for final disposition.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Indiana maintains an organ and tissue donor registry through Donate Life Indiana. Registration is separate from

INDIANA ORGAN & TISSUE DONOR REGISTRATION →

Indiana University School of Medicine operates the Anatomical Education Program. Donation requires preregistration before death and its own Certificate of Bequeathal.

Acceptance is determined at death and is not guaranteed. Keep another disposition plan in place.

If accepted, the program provides transportation and embalming, assists with the necessary paperwork, and eventually cremates the donor. Cremated remains may be returned to the family or, when arranged, inurned through the program.

Important: eye donation can remain compatible with the program, but donation of other organs or tissues makes the body unacceptable to IU's Anatomical Education Program.

IU ANATOMICAL EDUCATION PROGRAM →

INDIANA FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Indiana's Powers of Attorney Act allows you to appoint an attorney-in-fact to handle financial, property and other authorized matters for you.

This is separate from your Health Care Representative appointment.

Indiana does not supply a single mandatory general financial POA form. Because financial powers can include consequential authority over real estate, accounts, gifts, beneficiaries and other property, use a document drafted to comply with the current Indiana Powers of Attorney Act rather than an abbreviated homemade form.

INDIANA POWERS OF ATTORNEY ACT →

DIGITAL LIFE

Decide what happens to your accounts, devices, photographs, correspondence, websites, domains, cloud storage, creative work and private archives. Record what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or destroyed, and who should be trusted with access.

Indiana has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It provides the legal framework for fiduciary access to digital assets, but it does not replace your own practical inventory and instructions.

Complete any legacy or online account-management tools offered by the services you use as well. Those platform-level directions can affect what a fiduciary may later access.

DOWNLOAD DIGITAL LIFE →

IOWA DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE

Iowa lets you appoint an attorney-in-fact to make healthcare decisions when you cannot make them yourself. The statutory form also lets you record instructions and limitations on that authority.

To make it valid: sign the document using either two qualified witnesses or acknowledgment before a notarial officer. If you use witnesses, Iowa places restrictions on who may serve, including your appointed agent and certain healthcare providers.

Name a backup agent as well and give copies to the people you appoint and to your healthcare providers.

IOWA HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY →

IOWA PHYSICIAN ORDERS FOR SCOPE OF TREATMENT · IPOST

IPOST is intended for people who are frail, seriously ill, chronically ill or approaching the end of life and whose current treatment choices need to travel with them as medical orders.

It addresses CPR, scope of treatment and medically administered nutrition. IPOST complements rather than replaces your advance directive.

IOWA IPOST INFORMATION & OFFICIAL FORM →

IOWA DECLARATION OF DESIGNEE FOR FINAL DISPOSITION

Iowa lets you choose the person who will have responsibility for decisions concerning the final disposition of your body and ceremonies after death.

This is especially important when you want a partner, friend or other chosen person to control those decisions instead of relying on Iowa's default family hierarchy.

Iowa supplies the declaration itself in Chapter 144C. It also lets you identify funeral arrangements, cemetery property and special anatomical-gift instructions.

To make it valid: complete, date and sign the declaration and use either two witnesses or notarial acknowledgment. If witnesses are used, they sign in your presence and in each other's presence.

Tell your designee immediately. Iowa has an unusually short forfeiture rule. A person with disposition authority can lose that authority by failing to exercise it within 24 hours after receiving notice of the death or 40 hours after death, whichever is earlier.

Give your designee and alternate copies and keep another somewhere that can actually be found when death occurs.

IOWA DECLARATION OF DESIGNEE →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record the name, pronouns, gender and bodily presentation you want used after death, who may wash, dress or shroud you, who may see your body, how relationships should be described, what may appear in an obituary or memorial, what should remain private, and who should have no part in your care or ceremony.

Iowa's Declaration of Designee gives the person you choose authority over final disposition and ceremonies. Use the ADP document for the intimate detail the statutory declaration does not contain.

Pair the two. The Iowa declaration puts your chosen person in legal control; the ADP document tells them how you want that authority used.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record what you want to happen to your body between death and final disposition: washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, ceremony, funeral or no funeral, embalming preferences, and the people you want present and involved.

Iowa permits family-directed deathcare. Iowa law expressly contemplates a person other than a funeral director assuming custody of a dead body. That person takes on the corresponding legal duties, including the applicable death-registration and burial-transit requirements.

A burial-transit permit must be obtained before removal from the place of death when the non-funeral-director route is used. Special restrictions can apply when the death involves a communicable disease.

Embalming is not universally required. Iowa's licensed mortuary establishments have specific preservation and refrigeration rules for unembalmed bodies, but those professional-establishment rules should not automatically be treated as a universal home-vigil refrigeration statute.

Pair these wishes with your Iowa Declaration of Designee so the person you trust has authority when decisions need to be made.

DOWNLOAD AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

NATURAL / GREEN BURIAL

LEGAL. Iowa does not impose a universal requirement that every body be embalmed before burial, and our research found no statewide requirement that every grave use an outer burial vault or grave liner. A particular cemetery may impose its own lawful container rules.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL

LEGAL. Iowa law expressly recognizes private family burial sites. A private burial site restricted to members of a family, where interment rights are provided without payment or other consideration, is excluded from the Iowa Cemetery Act's definition of a cemetery.

That exemption does not erase rules governing the actual parcel. Check county or municipal land-use, environmental, property and recording requirements before establishing the grave. Iowa does not give every parcel one universal statewide setback that can safely be substituted for that local check.

IOWA CEMETERY & FAMILY BURIAL SITE LAW →

CREMATION

LEGAL. Iowa regulates cremation and the custody and disposition of cremated remains through its mortuary and crematory laws.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED. Iowa's current legal definition of cremation uses a process involving heat and flame, and the state does not currently provide a separate human alkaline-hydrolysis authorization and licensing pathway.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED. Iowa considered legislation in 2026 concerning natural organic reduction of human remains, but those proposals did not become operative law.

BURIAL AT SEA

LEGAL UNDER FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS. The actual ocean burial is governed primarily by federal EPA rules. Iowa's death-registration, burial-transit and transportation requirements still apply before the body leaves the state for final disposition.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Iowa maintains an anatomical-gift system and donor registry. You can also record donor status through the Iowa driver's-license and identification-card system.

Organ and tissue donation is separate from donating your whole body to a medical-school anatomical program.

IOWA ORGAN & TISSUE DONOR REGISTRATION →

The University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine operates a Deeded Body Program.

Donation requires a Deed of Disposition on file before death. The donor signs the program document with two witnesses. A generic organ donor card is not sufficient for

Acceptance is determined at death and is not guaranteed. Keep another disposition plan in place. If accepted, the donor is eventually cremated, and the cremated remains may be returned to the designated person or handled according to the program's arrangements.

UNIVERSITY OF IOWA DEEDED BODY PROGRAM →

IOWA STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY

Iowa provides a statutory Power of Attorney for property and financial matters. Use it to choose an agent and specify the authority that person will have over your money and property.

This is separate from your healthcare document. The statutory financial form does not itself authorize the agent to make healthcare decisions.

To make it valid: sign the Power of Attorney and acknowledge it before a notary public or another person legally authorized to take acknowledgments.

Iowa's statutory form becomes effective immediately after signature and acknowledgment unless you provide otherwise.

IOWA STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY →

DIGITAL LIFE

Decide what happens to your accounts, devices, photographs, correspondence, websites, domains, cloud storage, creative work and private archives. Record what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or destroyed, and who should be trusted with access.

Iowa has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It creates the legal framework for fiduciary access to digital property and recognizes directions given through a custodian's online tool.

Complete any legacy or account-management tools offered by the services you use as well. Those directions can affect what a fiduciary may later obtain.

The ADP document handles the practical terrain the statute cannot know: what exists, where it is, what matters, what should survive and what should disappear.

DOWNLOAD DIGITAL LIFE →

KANSAS DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE DECISIONS

Kansas provides a statutory Health Care Power of Attorney. Use it to name the person who will make healthcare decisions if you cannot make them yourself and to give that person instructions or limits on their authority.

The Kansas form can also give your agent authority concerning organ donation, autopsy and disposition of your body after death. That post-death authority survives your death.

To make it valid: date and sign it using either two qualified adult witnesses or acknowledgment before a notary public.

KANSAS HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY →

KANSAS LIVING WILL · NATURAL DEATH ACT DECLARATION

Kansas separately provides a Living Will for directing the withholding or withdrawal of life-sustaining procedures if you have a terminal condition and cannot communicate your wishes.

To make it valid: the declaration must be written, dated and signed, with either two qualified adult witnesses or notarial acknowledgment.

KANSAS LIVING WILL →

PRE-HOSPITAL DNR

Kansas also provides a statutory Pre-Hospital DNR Request Form for someone who wants emergency responders to withhold cardiopulmonary resuscitation if breathing or heartbeat stops.

This is a specific emergency-medical directive rather than a substitute for your Health Care Power of Attorney or Living Will.

KANSAS PRE-HOSPITAL DNR FORM →

KANSAS HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY · DISPOSITION AUTHORITY

Kansas does not require a separate disposition-agent document. Its Health Care Power of Attorney already provides the legal mechanism.

If your Health Care Power of Attorney gives your agent authority over disposition of your body, that agent occupies the first position in Kansas's ordinary disposition hierarchy, ahead of spouse, adult children, parents and other relatives.

This makes the Health Care Power of Attorney especially important if the person you trust is a partner, friend or other chosen person rather than the relative Kansas would otherwise select.

Do not remove the disposition authority from the form if you want your healthcare agent to remain in control after death.

KANSAS HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record the name, pronouns, gender and bodily presentation you want used after death, who may wash, dress or shroud you, who may see your body, how relationships should be described, what may appear in an obituary or memorial, what should remain private, and who should have no part in your care or ceremony.

Kansas does not provide the unusually detailed statutory identity protections found in a state such as Illinois. The strongest architecture is therefore to put the person you trust first through the Kansas Health Care Power of Attorney and give that person your detailed identity instructions separately.

The Kansas document supplies the authority. The ADP document supplies the human detail.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record what you want to happen to your body between death and final disposition: washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, ceremony, funeral or no funeral, embalming preferences, and the people you want present and involved.

Kansas expressly permits families to bury their own dead without using a funeral home, except where special infectious or contagious disease requirements apply. If no funeral home is used, the family becomes responsible for the necessary death certificate and other applicable paperwork.

Embalming is not universally required. An unembalmed body may ordinarily be buried or cremated within 24 hours after death. Kansas also permits an unembalmed body to be kept under refrigeration at a constant temperature below 40°F. When removed from that storage for transport, the body must reach its final destination within 24 hours.

Kansas provides additional exceptions and rules involving religious practices, health hazards and infectious or contagious disease.

Pair these instructions with your Kansas Health Care Power of Attorney when you want a particular person to retain legal authority after death.

DOWNLOAD AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

KANSAS FAMILY-DIRECTED FUNERAL GUIDANCE →

NATURAL / GREEN BURIAL

LEGAL. Kansas does not universally require embalming, a casket, an outer burial container or a vault. A particular cemetery may impose its own lawful container requirements.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL

LEGAL, SUBJECT TO LOCAL REQUIREMENTS. The Kansas Board of Mortuary Arts expressly confirms that burial on family property is possible.

Kansas does not supply one statewide rule that makes every parcel suitable for burial. Check the city and county rules governing the actual property before digging the grave.

KANSAS PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL GUIDANCE →

CREMATION

LEGAL. Kansas cremation operates through the state's licensed crematory system. Family-directed deathcare does not authorize operation of an unlicensed crematory.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

NO CLEAR VERIFIED AUTHORIZATION. Kansas defines cremation unusually broadly as a mechanical or other dissolution process that reduces human remains to bone fragments. However, the current regulatory system does not provide a clear, separately verified human alkaline-hydrolysis licensing pathway.

Because the statutory language creates genuine ambiguity, do not assume aquamation is presently available as an authorized Kansas disposition method without confirming current licensing with the Kansas Board of Mortuary Arts.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

NOT CURRENTLY AUTHORIZED. Kansas considered legislation in 2026 that would have created a legal and licensing framework for terramation. That proposal did not become operative law.

BURIAL AT SEA

LEGAL UNDER FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS. Ocean burial itself is governed primarily by federal EPA law. Kansas death-registration, transportation and disposition requirements still apply before the body leaves for final disposition.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Kansas maintains a statewide organ and tissue donor registry. Registering your own decision during life is the cleanest way to record the anatomical gift rather than leaving the question to the post-death hierarchy.

Organ and tissue donation is separate from

DONATE LIFE KANSAS REGISTRY →

Arrange the donation before death. Acceptance should never be treated as guaranteed, so keep another disposition plan in place.

KANSAS GENERAL DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY

Kansas lets you appoint an attorney-in-fact to manage financial, property and other authorized matters. This is separate from the Health Care Power of Attorney above.

Kansas requires a durable financial Power of Attorney to be signed, dated and acknowledged under Kansas notarial law. Certain consequential powers should be granted expressly rather than assumed from general language.

The Kansas Judicial Council publishes a General Durable Power of Attorney form with drafting notes and optional powers. Use the current Kansas form rather than an abbreviated homemade version.

KANSAS GENERAL DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY →

DIGITAL LIFE

Decide what happens to your accounts, devices, photographs, correspondence, websites, domains, cloud storage, creative work and private archives. Record what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or destroyed, and who should be trusted with access.

Kansas has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It provides a legal framework for fiduciary access to digital property and recognizes directions made through a service's online tool as well as directions contained in estate-planning records.

Complete any legacy or online account-management tools offered by the platforms you use. The ADP document handles the practical terrain: what exists, where it is, what should survive and what should disappear.

DOWNLOAD DIGITAL LIFE →

Kentucky Living Will Packet
Kentucky’s official advance-directive packet. Use it to name a health-care surrogate and successor, make decisions about life-prolonging treatment and artificial nutrition or hydration, and record anatomical-gift wishes.
GET THE KENTUCKY LIVING WILL PACKET →

Execution
Sign and date the directive, then either sign before two qualified adult witnesses or acknowledge it before a notary or other person authorized to administer oaths. Kentucky restricts who may serve as a witness, so use the instructions accompanying the state form.

Kentucky MOST
Medical Orders for Scope of Treatment are portable medical orders intended principally for people with serious or advanced illness. MOST does not replace your advance directive.
KENTUCKY MOST INFORMATION →

Kentucky Funeral Planning Declaration · Form FPD-1
Kentucky lets you designate the person who will control your funeral arrangements and disposition. Your designee takes priority over the ordinary family hierarchy. Use Kentucky’s official Funeral Planning Declaration rather than creating a separate private form.
KENTUCKY FUNERAL PLANNING DECLARATION · FPD-1 →

Do not leave the designation stranded.
Make sure the person you name knows they have been named and knows where the signed declaration is kept. Kentucky can allow authority to pass onward if the person entitled to act does not assume the obligation within the statutory period after notification of the death.

Identity After Death & Chosen Family
Record the name, pronouns, gender presentation, clothing, relationships, obituary language, ceremony, privacy, viewing and other identity instructions you want respected after death. Kentucky does not provide a comparable state form specifically protecting this territory.
ADP PDF · IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY →

Pair this with your Kentucky Funeral Planning Declaration. The declaration gives your chosen person legal authority over funeral and disposition decisions; this document tells them what you actually want.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

After-Death Wishes & Body Care
Record what you want done with your body immediately after death: who should be present, washing or dressing wishes, clothing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, preservation preferences, religious or nonreligious practices, and what you do not consent to.
ADP PDF · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

Kentucky does not universally require embalming.
But Kentucky regulates professional preparation of human remains. State funeral-service rules restrict “preparation for disposition” to a licensed embalmer or Level 2 apprentice working in the required preparation facility. Do not assume that every aspect of independent family preparation is legally unrestricted.

Kentucky’s cremation rules expressly contemplate disposition without embalming. If avoiding embalming matters to you, say so clearly in your planning documents and tell the person you have designated to control disposition.

Natural Burial
Natural burial is possible in Kentucky. State law does not impose universal embalming, conventional-casket or concrete-vault requirements on every burial. A particular cemetery may impose its own rules.

Private-Land Burial
Kentucky recognizes private burial grounds and private family cemeteries. Establishing or using a burial place on a particular parcel can still involve county, municipal, land-use and property-specific requirements. Check the rules governing the actual land before opening a grave or establishing a new family burial ground.
ADP PDF · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Cremation
Legal. Kentucky does not require embalming before cremation, and a conventional casket cannot be required simply because the body will be cremated.

Alkaline Hydrolysis / Aquamation
Not currently authorized under Kentucky’s human-disposition framework.

Natural Organic Reduction / Human Composting
Not currently authorized under Kentucky law.

Burial at Sea
Burial at sea is governed primarily by federal law. Kentucky death-registration, release and transport requirements still have to be completed before remains leave the Commonwealth for disposition.
U.S. EPA · BURIAL AT SEA →

Organ, Eye & Tissue Donation
Kentucky maintains a statewide donor registry. Registration is legal authorization for organ, eye and tissue donation when donation is medically possible.
REGISTER · DONATE LIFE KENTUCKY →

Kentucky Statutory Power of Attorney
Kentucky provides a statutory financial Power of Attorney form under KRS 457.420. It can authorize an agent to handle property, banking, business, insurance, benefits, retirement, taxes and other financial matters.
KENTUCKY STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY →

Have it notarized.
Kentucky law gives an acknowledged Power of Attorney important evidentiary and acceptance protections. Powers involving gifts, beneficiary designations, survivorship rights, trusts and other consequential acts require specific authorization. Read the form rather than granting everything by reflex.

Digital Life
Make a working map of your digital existence: accounts, devices, domains, websites, correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, subscriptions, archives and anything that should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private.
ADP PDF · DIGITAL LIFE →

Kentucky has a statutory fiduciary-access framework for digital assets in KRS Chapter 395A. Legal authority alone does not tell the person handling your affairs what exists or what you want done with it. Keep your Digital Life instructions with your other planning documents.
KENTUCKY · DIGITAL ASSETS LAW →

Louisiana Living Will · Declaration Concerning Life-Sustaining Procedures
Louisiana lets you make a written declaration directing whether life-sustaining procedures should be withheld or withdrawn if you later have a qualifying terminal and irreversible condition. The declaration is signed in the presence of two witnesses.
LOUISIANA LIVING WILL INFORMATION & FORM →

Health Care Power of Attorney / Mandate
Use a health-care mandate to name the person you want making medical decisions if you cannot make them yourself. Louisiana requires authority to make health-care decisions to be expressly granted rather than assumed from a general financial mandate.
LOUISIANA ADVANCE CARE PLANNING FORMS →

Advance Directive for Behavioral Health Treatment
Louisiana has a separate statutory advance directive for future behavioral-health treatment. It can address psychotropic medication, inpatient treatment and outpatient services and can appoint a representative and alternate. Its execution requirements are more demanding than an ordinary advance directive, including two qualified witnesses and the required psychiatric examination.
LOUISIANA · BEHAVIORAL HEALTH ADVANCE DIRECTIVE LAW →

LaPOST
Louisiana Physician Orders for Scope of Treatment are portable medical orders for people with serious advanced illness. LaPOST does not replace your advance directive. The form requires the appropriate patient or representative participation and a physician’s signature.
LOUISIANA LaPOST →

Designation & Directions for Disposition of Remains
Louisiana lets you choose the specific person who will control the disposition of your body. A designation can be made in a notarial testament or in a written and notarized declaration. The person you designate takes priority over the ordinary family hierarchy.
ADP PDF · LOUISIANA DESIGNATION & DIRECTIONS FOR DISPOSITION OF REMAINS →

Sign before a notary.
This is one of the Louisiana-specific legal forms being prepared for the Anarchist Death Project. Louisiana law expressly permits the designation to be made through a privately drafted written and notarized declaration. If qualifying documents conflict, the later-dated declaration or testament controls.

Tell the person you designate. Give them a copy and keep another with the documents people will actually find when you die. A legally excellent document hidden in a drawer nobody knows exists has a rather obvious defect.

Identity After Death & Chosen Family
Record the name, pronouns, gender presentation, clothing, relationships, obituary language, ceremony, privacy, viewing and other identity instructions you want respected after death.
ADP PDF · IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY →

Pair this with the Louisiana Designation & Directions for Disposition of Remains. Louisiana does not provide a comparable statutory protection specifically guaranteeing chosen name, pronouns or gender presentation after death. The disposition designation puts the person you trust in the position to carry your directions through.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

After-Death Wishes & Body Care
Record what you want done with your body immediately after death: who should be present, clothing and presentation, viewing, vigil, preservation preferences, ceremony, religious or nonreligious practices, and what you do not consent to.
ADP PDF · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

Louisiana regulates hands-on funeral preparation unusually broadly.
State law includes cleaning or dressing a dead body for burial within the regulated practice of funeral directing. Embalming itself may be performed only by a licensed embalmer. Do not assume Louisiana gives families the same independent hands-on preparation route available in states with broader family-care exemptions.

Embalming is not universally required.
Louisiana law separately recognizes watchful presence with the dead and attention to surviving family and friends. Family vigil and presence should not be confused with licensed preparation of the body.

Natural Burial
Natural burial is possible in Louisiana. State law does not universally require embalming, a conventional casket or a concrete vault for every burial. A cemetery may impose its own requirements, and Louisiana’s funeral-directing rules still govern who may perform regulated preparation of the body.

Private Family Burial Grounds
Louisiana expressly recognizes family burial grounds where no lots are sold to the public and interments are restricted to people related by blood or marriage. Qualifying family burial grounds use the Louisiana Cemetery Board’s exempt-cemetery process rather than the ordinary commercial cemetery structure. Local parish and land-use requirements can still apply.
ADP PDF · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Louisiana Cemetery Board
A qualifying family burial ground must establish its exempt status with the Cemetery Board. Use the Board’s current instructions and forms rather than creating a private substitute for its application.
LOUISIANA CEMETERY BOARD →

Cremation
Legal. Your designated disposition representative can be placed ahead of default relatives for cremation decisions. Louisiana also permits lawful scattering of cremated remains on private property with the necessary property-owner permission.

Alkaline Hydrolysis / Aquamation
Not currently authorized under Louisiana’s human-disposition framework.

Natural Organic Reduction / Human Composting
Not currently authorized under Louisiana law.

Burial at Sea
Burial at sea is governed principally by federal law. Louisiana death-registration, release and transport requirements still apply before remains leave the state for disposition.
U.S. EPA · BURIAL AT SEA →

Organ, Eye & Tissue Donation
Louisiana maintains a donor registry for anatomical gifts. Registering your own decision gives procurement organizations a direct record of your wishes rather than leaving the question to be reconstructed after death.
LOUISIANA DONOR REGISTRY →

Louisiana Mandate
Louisiana uses the civil-law concept of a mandate: a principal gives another person, the mandatory, authority to transact specified affairs. Certain consequential powers must be granted expressly, including authority involving donations, borrowing, succession matters and health-care decisions.
LOUISIANA · POWERS THAT REQUIRE EXPRESS AUTHORITY →

Louisiana does not provide a single general civilian statutory financial form that the Portal should substitute for individualized planning. If you create a broad financial mandate, pay particular attention to the powers actually written into it rather than assuming a generic grant covers everything.

Digital Life
Make a working map of your accounts, devices, domains, websites, correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, subscriptions, archives and anything that should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private.
ADP PDF · DIGITAL LIFE →

Louisiana has adopted a fiduciary-access framework for digital assets. Legal authority does not tell your representative what exists, what matters to you, or what should disappear. Use the ADP Digital Life document to leave those instructions deliberately.
LOUISIANA · FIDUCIARY ACCESS TO DIGITAL ASSETS →

Maine Advance Health Care Directive
Maine’s Advance Health Care Directive lets you name a health-care agent and alternate, give instructions about future medical treatment, address anatomical gifts, and identify a primary physician. Maine law does not require you to use the statutory model, but the existing form already provides the legal machinery.
MAINE ADVANCE HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVE →

Execution
The health-care power-of-attorney portion must be in writing and signed by you and two witnesses. Maine requires these signatures to be made in person rather than electronically.

Maine POLST
Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment are portable medical orders for people with serious illness or frailty. POLST does not replace an Advance Health Care Directive.
MAINE POLST →

Advance Directive for Mental Health Care
Maine also supports advance planning specifically for a future mental-health crisis. Disability Rights Maine provides a detailed guide and planning materials for directing psychiatric care if you later cannot make your own decisions.
MAINE · MENTAL HEALTH ADVANCE PLANNING →

Designation & Directions for Custody and Control of Remains
Maine lets you choose who will have custody and control of your body after death. That authority includes possession of the body, funeral arrangements, final disposition and disinterment. Your chosen person takes priority over the ordinary next-of-kin hierarchy.
ADP PDF · MAINE DESIGNATION & DIRECTIONS FOR CUSTODY AND CONTROL OF REMAINS →

The legal doorway is unusually simple.
Maine requires the designation to be written and signed. The statute does not require witnesses, notarization or filing with the state. The ADP Maine form is being prepared specifically around this statutory mechanism.

Make sure your person knows.
Maine’s priority can move to the next person in the statutory hierarchy if the person holding custody and control does not exercise that authority within four days after death. Give your designee a copy and make the original easy to find.

Written funeral and disposition instructions can also be given in Maine. Their enforceability can depend upon whether arrangements were prepaid or sufficient resources were left to carry them out, so distinguish between who has authority and the particular arrangements you are asking that person to make.

Identity After Death & Chosen Family
Record the name, pronouns, gender presentation, clothing, relationships, obituary language, ceremony, privacy, viewing and other identity instructions you want respected after death.
ADP PDF · IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY →

Maine expressly protects desired gender identity on the death certificate.
When the person completing the certificate knows the deceased person’s desired gender identity from a living will, Advance Health Care Directive or another record, Maine law requires the death certificate to reflect that identity. The record may even have been prepared by someone other than the deceased.
MAINE · DEATH CERTIFICATE LAW →

Maine does not provide an equivalent express statutory guarantee for chosen name or pronouns. Pair the ADP identity document with the Maine Custody and Control designation so the person entrusted with your body also has a precise record of how you want to be represented.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

After-Death Wishes & Body Care
Record what you want done with your body immediately after death: who should be present, washing and dressing wishes, clothing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, preservation preferences, ceremony, religious or nonreligious practices, and what you do not consent to.
ADP PDF · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

A funeral director is not universally required.
Maine’s vital-record system expressly recognizes an authorized person other than a funeral director. An authorized person can participate in the death-certificate and final-disposition-permit process.

An authorized person may transport the body.
Maine expressly excludes transportation of human remains by an authorized person from the statutory definition of practicing funeral service. Commercial or professional funeral service remains licensed activity.
MAINE · FUNERAL SERVICE DEFINITIONS →

Maine does not give us a similarly explicit statutory list declaring every form of family washing, dressing, shrouding or preservation exempt from professional licensing. Keep the difference clear: family custody, transportation and the authorized-person paperwork route are expressly supported; professional funeral-service activity remains regulated.

Natural Burial
Legal. Maine does not impose a universal state-law requirement for a conventional casket or burial vault. State guidance expressly recognizes burial in a shroud. An individual cemetery may still impose its own lawful container requirements.

Private-Land Burial · Family Burial Ground
Maine expressly allows burial on private property through its family burial ground system. The burial ground is limited to one-quarter acre and must satisfy Maine’s boundary-marking and recording requirements.
ADP PDF · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Register a Family Burial Ground
Maine already provides the state registration route, so there is no need for an ADP substitute form. Use the Maine CDC’s current family-burial-ground materials when establishing the site.
MAINE CDC · FAMILY BURIAL GROUNDS →

Cremation
Legal. Maine also lets a person preauthorize their own cremation in a signed written document, without requiring another person’s consent after death. A body transported to a crematory must be enclosed in a casket or other suitable container; this does not mean you must purchase a conventional funeral casket.

Natural Organic Reduction / Human Composting
Legal. Maine has expressly incorporated natural organic reduction into its current deathcare law and licenses facilities performing it.
MAINE · NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION LAW →

Alkaline Hydrolysis / Aquamation
Not currently authorized under Maine’s human-disposition framework. Maine has enacted a specific regulatory structure for natural organic reduction but no corresponding current authorization for human alkaline hydrolysis.

Burial at Sea
Burial at sea is governed principally by federal law. Maine death-registration, release and transport requirements still apply before remains are taken for disposition at sea.
U.S. EPA · BURIAL AT SEA →

Organ, Eye & Tissue Donation
Maine maintains an Organ Donor Registry. A person can make an anatomical gift through the registry and through other methods recognized by Maine law, including a donor card, will, advance directive or other signed record.
MAINE · ORGAN DONOR REGISTRY →

Maine Power of Attorney
Maine’s Uniform Power of Attorney Act allows a privately drafted financial Power of Attorney. A Maine POA must be signed by the principal, or at the principal’s direction in the principal’s conscious presence, and acknowledged before a notary or other person authorized to take acknowledgments.
MAINE · POWER OF ATTORNEY EXECUTION & NOTICES →

Do not use an old Maine statutory POA form found online.
Maine’s former principal POA form belonged to the repealed Title 18-A framework. Current law does not provide that old general statutory form. A durable POA must also contain Maine’s required Notice to the Principal and Notice to the Agent, substantially in the statutory form.

Because a financial POA can confer extensive authority over property, accounts, gifts, beneficiaries and other assets, the Anarchist Death Project does not provide a substitute general financial POA for Maine.

Digital Life
Make a working map of your accounts, devices, domains, websites, correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, subscriptions, archives and anything that should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private.
ADP PDF · DIGITAL LIFE →

Maine has adopted the Maine Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. A direction made through a platform’s online legacy or fiduciary tool can take priority over contrary directions in a will, trust, Power of Attorney or other record while that online direction remains modifiable. If no online tool is used, digital-asset directions can be given through those other records.
MAINE · DIGITAL ASSET DIRECTIONS →

Access to the content of electronic communications receives additional protection. Maine generally requires evidence of the deceased user’s consent before a personal representative can obtain that content unless a court orders disclosure. Use platform legacy tools where available and leave explicit digital instructions rather than assuming ordinary estate authority will unlock everything.
MAINE · ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS AFTER DEATH →

Maryland Advance Directive
Maryland’s official Advance Directive lets you name a health-care agent, give instructions about future medical treatment, and make decisions concerning disposition of your body and funeral arrangements. Part III specifically addresses who will control those decisions after death.
MARYLAND ADVANCE DIRECTIVE · FILLABLE PDF →

Execution
A written Maryland Advance Directive is generally signed and dated in the presence of two witnesses. The person you appoint as your health-care agent cannot serve as a witness. Follow the execution instructions included with the current Maryland form.

Maryland MOLST
Maryland Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment are portable medical orders concerning current treatment. MOLST does not replace your Advance Directive. A valid MOLST order is completed through the appropriate health-care practitioner.
MARYLAND MOLST →

Choose Your Authorizing Agent
Maryland lets an adult decide the disposition of their own body and designate the person who will carry those decisions out. A valid designation puts that person ahead of the ordinary family hierarchy. Maryland’s official Advance Directive already includes this mechanism in Part III · Disposition of Body and Funeral Arrangements.
MARYLAND ADVANCE DIRECTIVE · PART III →

No separate ADP Maryland designation is needed.
Maryland also permits a separately drafted disposition document, but it must be written and signed by you in the presence of a witness, who must then sign in your presence. Because the official Advance Directive already performs this function, use the state form rather than multiplying legal documents.
MARYLAND · RIGHT OF DISPOSITION LAW →

Make sure your person knows.
A person can forfeit disposition authority by failing to exercise it within 7 days after notification by a funeral establishment or 10 days after death, whichever occurs first. Give your chosen person a copy of the directive and make the original easy to find.

Identity After Death & Chosen Family
Record the name, pronouns, gender presentation, clothing, relationships, obituary language, ceremony, privacy, viewing and other identity instructions you want respected after death.
ADP PDF · IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY →

Pair this with Part III of your Maryland Advance Directive. Maryland gives you a strong mechanism for choosing the person who controls disposition, but no equivalent statutory protection was found specifically guaranteeing chosen name, pronouns or gender presentation after death. Put the authority and the instructions together.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

After-Death Wishes & Body Care
Record what you want done with your body immediately after death: who should be present, washing and dressing wishes, clothing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, preservation preferences, ceremony, religious or nonreligious practices, and what you do not consent to.
ADP PDF · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

Embalming is not universally required.
Maryland generally prohibits embalming or artificial preservation without the express permission of the person legally authorized to arrange final disposition, unless a court orders otherwise.
MARYLAND · EMBALMING & PRESERVATION LAW →

Family participation and the administrative route are different questions.
Maryland’s professional licensing definitions focus substantially on funeral and mortuary services performed for compensation, so unpaid family activity should not automatically be described as professional funeral practice. But Maryland’s formal death-certificate and burial-transit system remains mortician-centered. A completely independent family administrative route was not verified.

If family-directed care matters to you, put the personal care you want in writing and discuss the practical arrangements with your chosen authorizing agent before death rather than assuming every administrative step can be handled without a licensed practitioner.

Natural Burial
Legal. No universal Maryland law was found requiring every earth burial to use embalming, a conventional casket, grave liner or burial vault. Individual cemeteries may impose their own lawful requirements.

Private-Land Burial
Maryland expressly allows burial in a family burial plot or another area allowed by local ordinance. This does not create a statewide right to bury on any parcel you choose. County or municipal land-use and burial rules still govern whether a particular property can be used.
ADP PDF · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Maryland’s Burial Law
Check the local rules governing the actual property before establishing a new burial place. Qualifying private family cemeteries that do not conduct public sales are exempt from substantial portions of Maryland’s commercial cemetery regime.
MARYLAND · LAWFUL PLACES OF DISPOSITION →

Cremation
Legal. Maryland requires at least 12 hours after death before cremation may begin. Maryland treats cremation specifically as disposition by incineration rather than using the word to conceal chemically or biologically different methods.

Alkaline Hydrolysis / Aquamation
Legal. Maryland expressly recognizes alkaline hydrolysis as a lawful human-disposition method and incorporates it into its authorizing-agent and facility laws.
MARYLAND · CREMATION, AQUAMATION & NOR DEFINITIONS →

Natural Organic Reduction / Human Composting
Legal. Maryland expressly recognizes natural organic reduction and licensed reduction facilities. The same minimum 12-hour waiting period applies before the process begins.

NOR Soil Remains
Maryland places specific limits on what can happen afterward. Soil remains cannot be placed on public or private property without the required owner’s prior written permission. They cannot be used to grow food for humans or livestock, sold or resold, or mixed into compost offered for commercial sale. If the deceased was the sole owner of the property at death, the authorizing agent may provide the required permission.
MARYLAND · NOR SOIL REMAINS RULES →

Burial at Sea
Burial at sea is governed principally by federal law. Maryland death-registration, permit and transport requirements still apply before remains leave the state for disposition at sea.
U.S. EPA · BURIAL AT SEA →

Organ, Eye & Tissue Donation
Maryland maintains a donor registry through the Motor Vehicle Administration. A valid Maryland donor registration constitutes legal authorization for the anatomical gift and does not require another person’s consent while the gift remains in effect.
MARYLAND · ORGAN & TISSUE DONOR REGISTRATION →

You may register for both organ/tissue donation and If transplantable organs can be used, the organ-donation program takes precedence. The State Anatomy Board pays program costs for an accepted in-state donation, including transportation, preparation and cremation.

Maryland Statutory Form Personal Financial Power of Attorney
Maryland provides its own statutory financial Power of Attorney. Use the state form rather than an ADP substitute. Maryland also provides a statutory limited Power of Attorney when you want to delegate selected powers rather than the full statutory package.
MARYLAND · STATUTORY FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY →

Execution matters.
A Maryland Power of Attorney must be in writing, signed by you or at your direction in your physical presence, acknowledged before a notary and attested by at least two adult witnesses. The notary may serve as one of the two witnesses.
MARYLAND · POWER OF ATTORNEY EXECUTION →

Digital Life
Make a working map of your accounts, devices, domains, websites, correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, subscriptions, archives and anything that should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private.
ADP PDF · DIGITAL LIFE →

Maryland’s statutory financial Power of Attorney can expressly grant authority over digital assets, including electronic communications and other digital property. Use that legal authority together with the ADP Digital Life document, which tells your person what actually exists and what you want done with it.
MARYLAND · DIGITAL AUTHORITY IN STATUTORY POA →

Platform-level legacy and account-management tools should still be completed wherever they exist. A legal grant of authority is far more useful when the person exercising it can actually find the accounts, archives and instructions you left behind.

Massachusetts Health Care Proxy
Use a Health Care Proxy to name the person who will make medical decisions for you if you become unable to make or communicate those decisions yourself.
MASSACHUSETTS HEALTH CARE PROXY · PDF →

Execution
Sign the Health Care Proxy in the presence of two adult witnesses. Neither witness may be the person you appoint as your health-care agent. Your agent’s authority begins when the required determination is made that you lack capacity to make or communicate health-care decisions.

Personal Directive / Living Will
Massachusetts does not give a living will the same statutory status as the Health Care Proxy, but a Personal Directive can leave your agent and clinicians a detailed record of your treatment wishes, values and limits. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health currently points residents to the free Health Care Proxy and Personal Directive resources developed with Honoring Choices Massachusetts.
MASSACHUSETTS · HEALTH CARE PROXY & LIVING WILL RESOURCES →

MOLST · changing to POLST in 2027
Massachusetts is still using MOLST now. Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment are portable medical orders for people with serious illness or frailty. The Commonwealth plans to transition statewide to the National POLST model in spring 2027. Existing valid MOLST forms will continue to be honored after the transition.
MASSACHUSETTS · MOLST TO POLST TRANSITION →

Massachusetts does not currently provide a statutory standalone disposition-agent designation.
Bills have been proposed that would create a formal right-of-disposition designation, but that proposed mechanism is not current Massachusetts law. Do not use a form copied from pending legislation and assume it will place your chosen person ahead of everyone else.

Written funeral and burial instructions still matter.
Massachusetts probate law expressly allows the person you name as executor in your will to carry out your written instructions concerning your body, funeral and burial arrangements even before that executor is formally appointed by the court.
MASSACHUSETTS · WRITTEN FUNERAL & BURIAL INSTRUCTIONS →

If control over your body is especially important, put your wishes in writing, choose the executor of your will deliberately, give that person a copy, and make sure the documents can actually be found when you die. Massachusetts presently gives less direct protection to a separately named disposition agent than states with an enacted funeral-representative statute.

Identity After Death & Chosen Family
Record the name, pronouns, gender presentation, clothing, relationships, obituary language, ceremony, privacy, viewing and other identity instructions you want respected after death.
ADP PDF · IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY →

Massachusetts does not currently provide the kind of express post-death protection Maine gives desired gender identity on a death certificate, and no equivalent statutory guarantee was found for chosen name, pronouns or gender presentation. Keep this document with your written funeral instructions and estate papers, and give it directly to the people you expect to carry those wishes out.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

After-Death Wishes & Body Care
Record what you want done with your body immediately after death: who should be present, washing and dressing wishes, clothing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, preservation preferences, ceremony, religious or nonreligious practices, and what you do not consent to.
ADP PDF · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

A funeral director is not universally required.
Massachusetts expressly allows a family member, friend or other acquaintance to act as the family designee and obtain the required burial permit without compensation. State law itself refers to an “undertaker or other person” receiving the permit before burial, disposition or removal of the body.
MASSACHUSETTS · FAMILY-DIRECTED DISPOSITION GUIDE →

Family and friends may transport the body without compensation.
Massachusetts provides a genuine noncommercial family-directed route. The required permit must be obtained before the body is taken across a municipal boundary. Performing funeral-directing services for compensation is a different matter and falls within professional licensing law.

Embalming is not generally required.
Massachusetts allows disposition without routine embalming. Public-health circumstances can create exceptions, and a particular funeral arrangement may involve additional requirements, but embalming is not the statewide price of admission to burial.
MASSACHUSETTS · FUNERAL CONSUMER INFORMATION →

Natural / Green Burial
Legal. Massachusetts does not impose a universal statewide requirement that every earth burial use embalming, a conventional casket, grave liner or burial vault. Individual cemeteries may impose their own lawful rules.

Home / Private-Land Burial
Massachusetts does not prohibit home burial, but the land cannot simply be used for burial without approval. Establishing a burial place ordinarily requires written approval from the local Board of Health and permission from the city or town government. Environmental and water-supply siting rules may impose additional requirements.
ADP PDF · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Massachusetts Home & Green Burial Guidance
The Commonwealth provides unusually useful guidance for families and local Boards of Health considering burial on private residential property. A private burial can also affect the property itself, so the burial site should be properly documented in the land records before the property is transferred.
MASSACHUSETTS · HOME & GREEN BURIAL →

Cremation
Legal. Massachusetts generally requires 48 hours after death before cremation. A suitable receptacle is required, but state law expressly says a conventional casket may not be required unless the person legally entitled to custody and control requests one.
MASSACHUSETTS · CREMATION LAW →

Alkaline Hydrolysis / Aquamation
Not currently authorized. Legislation has been proposed to add alkaline hydrolysis to Massachusetts law, but the current enacted permanent-disposition statute still recognizes earth interment, lawful entombment and cremation rather than alkaline hydrolysis.

Natural Organic Reduction / Human Composting
Not currently authorized. Natural organic reduction has likewise appeared in proposed Massachusetts legislation but has not been added to the Commonwealth’s current permanent-disposition law.
MASSACHUSETTS · CURRENT PERMANENT DISPOSITION LAW →

Burial at Sea
Burial at sea is governed principally by federal law. Massachusetts death-registration, permit and transport requirements still have to be completed before remains are taken for disposition at sea.
U.S. EPA · BURIAL AT SEA →

Organ, Eye & Tissue Donation
Massachusetts maintains an organ and tissue donor registry through the Registry of Motor Vehicles. You can register your decision directly rather than leaving it to be reconstructed after death.
MASSACHUSETTS · ORGAN DONOR REGISTRATION →

For an accepted Massachusetts donation, UMass Chan covers ordinary program expenses including in-state transportation, the initial death certificate and burial/transit permit, cremation, and return or program interment of the cremated remains.

Massachusetts Durable Power of Attorney
Massachusetts recognizes a written durable Power of Attorney for financial and property matters, but the Commonwealth does not provide a single general statutory fillable form comparable to Maryland’s.
MASSACHUSETTS · POWER OF ATTORNEY INFORMATION →

Do not treat every Power of Attorney as interchangeable.
Particular transactions can require additional formalities, especially powers used for recordable real-estate transactions. Because a general financial POA can give another person extensive control over property, accounts and transactions, the Anarchist Death Project does not provide a substitute Massachusetts financial POA.

Digital Life
Make a working map of your accounts, devices, domains, websites, correspondence, photographs, manuscripts, subscriptions, archives and anything that should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private.
ADP PDF · DIGITAL LIFE →

Massachusetts has not yet enacted RUFADAA.
Legislation has been moving through the General Court that would create a Massachusetts Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, but proposed legislation is not current law. Do not assume an executor or financial agent automatically has the standardized digital-access rights available in states that have already enacted RUFADAA.

Use the legacy, inactive-account or fiduciary tools offered directly by individual platforms wherever they exist, and leave explicit instructions identifying what should be preserved, transferred or destroyed. The absence of a comprehensive Massachusetts RUFADAA statute makes deliberate planning especially useful here.
MASSACHUSETTS · PENDING DIGITAL ASSETS LEGISLATION →

Choose who can make medical decisions for you if you cannot make them yourself.

Michigan uses a Patient Advocate / Medical Power of Attorney. You choose the person who will speak for you about medical care if you become unable to make or communicate those decisions yourself.

The Michigan Attorney General provides a free fillable Medical Power of Attorney form. Michigan requires two qualified witnesses, and the person you appoint must accept the appointment.

MEDICAL POWER OF ATTORNEY · MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL →

If you have serious advanced illness or frailty:

MI-POST is Michigan's portable medical-order form for people with serious advanced illness or frailty. It records medical orders concerning CPR and the level of treatment wanted during a medical crisis. It is not an ordinary advance directive for healthy adults.

MI-POST · MICHIGAN PHYSICIAN ORDERS FOR SCOPE OF TREATMENT →

Michigan lets you choose who will have legal authority over your funeral and the disposition of your body.

You may designate a Funeral Representative to make decisions about your funeral arrangements and the handling, disposition or disinterment of your body, including cremation. A properly designated Funeral Representative takes priority over the ordinary next-of-kin hierarchy.

The designation must be in writing, dated and signed. It must either be signed in the presence of two qualified witnesses who also sign it, or acknowledged before a notary public.

This matters especially if the person you trust is a friend, unmarried partner, chosen family member or anyone else who would not otherwise have first legal authority after your death.

ADP · MICHIGAN FUNERAL REPRESENTATIVE DESIGNATION & DIRECTIONS →

Michigan still requires the handling and disposition of a dead body to occur under the supervision of a person licensed to practice mortuary science. Appointing your own Funeral Representative changes who has authority to make the decisions; it does not remove that professional-supervision requirement.

READ · MICHIGAN FUNERAL REPRESENTATIVE LAW →

Write down how you want to be known, presented and cared for after death, then give legal authority to someone you trust to carry those wishes.

Use the ADP Identity After Death & Chosen Family document for your name, pronouns, gender, clothing, grooming, bodily presentation, chosen relationships, obituary, memorial, photographs, privacy, who may care for or see your body, and who you do not want involved.

The ADP document records your wishes. In Michigan, the stronger legal protection is to pair those instructions with a valid Funeral Representative designation, giving the person you trust priority to make funeral and disposition decisions.

ADP · MICHIGAN FUNERAL REPRESENTATIVE DESIGNATION & DIRECTIONS →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

Michigan places professional supervision around the handling and disposition of the body.

Michigan law requires the handling, disposition or disinterment of a dead body to be under the supervision of a person licensed to practice mortuary science. A licensed funeral director must also certify the death record, and final-disposition authorization is obtained through the funeral-director system.

This means Michigan does not provide the fully independent family-directed route available in several other states. Your people can still make choices about vigil, ceremony, clothing, presentation and the kind of funeral or burial you want, but the state's mortuary-supervision requirements remain part of the process.

ADP · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

Use this alongside your Michigan Funeral Representative designation so the person holding legal authority also has your actual instructions in their hands.

Private-land burial is legal in Michigan, with a distinct route for small private burial grounds outside cities and villages.

Michigan law permits a private burial ground of less than one acre outside the limits of an incorporated city or village. Establishing the burial ground involves surveying and recording the land through the county register of deeds. Local zoning, land-use, environmental and health rules still need to be checked for the particular property.

ADP · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Michigan does not impose a statewide conventional-casket or burial-vault requirement for every burial. Individual cemeteries may impose their own rules. Private-land burial does not eliminate Michigan's funeral-director and disposition-documentation requirements.

CREMATION

Cremation is legal in Michigan. Medical-examiner authorization is part of the cremation process.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

Michigan does not currently authorize alkaline hydrolysis as a method of human disposition.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

Michigan does not currently authorize natural organic reduction as a method of human disposition.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Michigan maintains an official Organ Donor Registry. Registration records your own donation decision, and Michigan treats an adult's registered decision as first-person authorization that cannot simply be overridden by family after death.

MICHIGAN ORGAN DONOR REGISTRY →

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN · ANATOMICAL DONATIONS PROGRAM →

Choose who can manage financial and property matters if you cannot manage them yourself.

Michigan has adopted the Uniform Power of Attorney Act and now has a statutory financial Power of Attorney framework. The Michigan Attorney General also provides a free fillable form prepared to comply with the current law.

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY · MICHIGAN ATTORNEY GENERAL →

A financial Power of Attorney governs authority during life. It is separate from the Funeral Representative designation that determines who controls funeral and disposition decisions after death.

Decide who may reach your digital life, and say explicitly what they may access.

Michigan has a Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act governing access to digital accounts and electronic communications by fiduciaries. Access to the actual content of electronic communications can require specific consent, so a vague instruction to “handle my accounts” is not enough for every kind of digital material.

ADP · DIGITAL LIFE →

Use it to record your accounts, devices, archives, photographs, correspondence and other digital material; who should have access; what should be preserved, transferred or destroyed; and your express consent concerning disclosure of the content of electronic communications.

READ · MICHIGAN FIDUCIARY ACCESS TO DIGITAL ASSETS ACT →

Choose who can make health-care decisions for you if you cannot make or communicate them yourself.

Minnesota uses a Health Care Directive. In a single document, you may appoint a health-care agent and write instructions about the medical care you do or do not want.

Minnesota does not require one particular government form. The Minnesota Attorney General provides information about Health Care Directives and links to forms that satisfy Minnesota law.

HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVES · MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL →

A Minnesota Health Care Directive must be in writing and dated. Your signature must either be witnessed by two qualified witnesses or acknowledged before a notary public.

If you have a serious illness or advanced frailty:

Minnesota also uses POLST, a portable medical-order form completed with a health-care professional for people who are seriously ill or medically frail. It is not a replacement for an ordinary Health Care Directive.

MINNESOTA POLST →

Minnesota lets you choose who will control your funeral and final disposition after death.

You may appoint a person to have the right to control your final disposition and give that person directions concerning what is to happen to your body. A valid appointment can place the person you choose ahead of the ordinary next-of-kin hierarchy.

This is especially important if the person you trust is an unmarried partner, friend, chosen family member or anyone else who would not otherwise have first legal authority.

ADP · MINNESOTA APPOINTMENT & DIRECTIONS FOR CONTROL OF FINAL DISPOSITION →

The ADP form will combine the appointment with your written disposition directions so the person holding legal authority also has a clear record of what you actually wanted.

READ · MINNESOTA RIGHT TO CONTROL FINAL DISPOSITION →

Record how you want to be known, presented and cared for after death, then put legal authority in the hands of someone you trust.

Use the ADP Identity After Death & Chosen Family document for your name, pronouns, gender, clothing, grooming, bodily presentation, chosen relationships, obituary, memorial, photographs, privacy, who may care for or see your body, and who you do not want involved.

Pair those instructions with the Minnesota Appointment & Directions for Control of Final Disposition. The identity document records the details. The Minnesota appointment gives the person you choose legal priority to carry your disposition wishes.

ADP · MINNESOTA APPOINTMENT & DIRECTIONS FOR CONTROL OF FINAL DISPOSITION →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

Minnesota expressly leaves room for families and chosen people to care for their own dead.

Minnesota's mortuary-science law exempts people who prepare a dead human body for final disposition when they do so privately and without compensation. That makes family-directed body care possible without turning ordinary care of your own dead into the commercial practice of mortuary science.

Your people may wash, dress and prepare the body, keep vigil and arrange a home funeral. Minnesota also provides a route for a person other than a licensed funeral director to obtain the documentation needed for final disposition.

ADP · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

Use it to leave instructions about washing, dressing, shrouding, refrigeration or other care, vigil, ceremony, who may participate, who may see or touch your body, and what you want kept outside the funeral industry entirely.

READ · MINNESOTA MORTUARY SCIENCE LAW →

Private-land burial and natural burial are possible in Minnesota.

A family burial ground may be established on private property, but Minnesota places specific requirements around the land and grave location. Before choosing a burial site, check the current state requirements together with county and local zoning, land-use and environmental rules.

ADP · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Minnesota does not impose a universal requirement that every burial use a conventional casket or concrete burial vault. Individual cemeteries may impose their own rules.

PRESERVATION

Minnesota requires a body that will not be finally disposed of within 72 hours after death to be embalmed or refrigerated, subject to the applicable statutory exceptions. Refrigeration therefore provides a non-embalming route for an extended home funeral or delayed burial.

CREMATION

Cremation is legal in Minnesota and must occur through the state's regulated cremation system. The required authorization and disposition paperwork still apply even when the rest of the funeral is family-directed.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

Minnesota authorizes alkaline hydrolysis as a method of final disposition and regulates alkaline-hydrolysis facilities within its mortuary-science framework.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

Minnesota does not currently authorize natural organic reduction as a method of human disposition.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Minnesota participates in the Donate Life donor-registration system. A person's own valid anatomical gift carries legal force and generally cannot simply be revoked by family after death.

REGISTER · DONATE LIFE MINNESOTA →

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA · ANATOMY BEQUEST PROGRAM →

Choose who can handle financial and property matters for you during life.

Minnesota provides a statutory Short Form Power of Attorney. It lets you appoint an attorney-in-fact and select the categories of authority you want to grant rather than writing an entirely new financial Power of Attorney from scratch.

POWER OF ATTORNEY · MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL →

This financial authority is separate from the person appointed to control final disposition after death. Do not assume that appointing someone under an ordinary financial Power of Attorney automatically gives that person control of your body.

Decide who may reach your digital life and what they are actually allowed to access.

Minnesota has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. You may leave directions concerning digital assets through qualifying estate-planning documents and, where a service provides one, through the service's own online tool.

Access to the actual content of electronic communications can require explicit consent. Account access, account records and the contents of private messages or email are not legally identical things.

ADP · DIGITAL LIFE →

Use it to identify your accounts, devices, archives, photographs and correspondence; choose who should have access; state what should be preserved, transferred or destroyed; and expressly consent, where you want to, to disclosure of the content of electronic communications.

READ · MINNESOTA FIDUCIARY ACCESS TO DIGITAL ASSETS ACT →

Choose who can make health-care decisions for you and leave your own instructions for medical care.

Mississippi's Advance Health-Care Directive allows you to appoint a health-care agent and state your wishes about treatment if you later cannot make or communicate those decisions yourself.

Mississippi law provides statutory language for the directive. You do not have to use the exact statutory form, but a directive must satisfy Mississippi's execution requirements.

MISSISSIPPI ADVANCE HEALTH-CARE DIRECTIVE · STATUTORY FORM →

If you have serious advanced illness or frailty:

Mississippi also has a standardized Physician Orders for Sustaining Treatment (POST) form. POST is a medical-order document for people whose medical condition makes current orders about resuscitation and other life-sustaining treatment appropriate. It is not a substitute for an ordinary advance directive.

MISSISSIPPI POST · OFFICIAL FORM →

Mississippi lets you direct your own final disposition rather than leaving control automatically to the state's family hierarchy.

Mississippi law recognizes a Self-Directed Disposition Authorization. Through it, you may give directions concerning the disposition of your body and move those decisions outside the ordinary next-of-kin order.

This matters especially if the person you trust is an unmarried partner, friend, chosen family member or anyone else whose authority might otherwise be displaced by legal relatives.

ADP · MISSISSIPPI SELF-DIRECTED DISPOSITION AUTHORIZATION →

Mississippi names this legal instrument but does not currently provide a public state form for it. The ADP form is being built around the authority created by Mississippi law, with space for your disposition choices and the person you want carrying them out.

READ · MISSISSIPPI RIGHT OF DISPOSITION LAW →

Record how you want to be known, presented and cared for after death, then place those instructions with the person responsible for your disposition.

Use the ADP Identity After Death & Chosen Family document for your name, pronouns, gender, clothing, grooming, bodily presentation, chosen relationships, obituary, memorial, photographs, privacy, who may see or participate in caring for your body, and who you do not want involved.

Mississippi does not presently provide a specific statutory protection requiring a deceased person's chosen name, pronouns or gender identity to govern the death record or funeral arrangements. Pairing your written identity instructions with a valid Self-Directed Disposition Authorization gives the person carrying out your wishes a much stronger practical foundation.

ADP · MISSISSIPPI SELF-DIRECTED DISPOSITION AUTHORIZATION →

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Mississippi keeps removal and professional funeral-service work inside a licensed system.

A dead body may be picked up on first call or removed by a licensed funeral director, a licensed funeral-service practitioner, or someone acting under the direction of one of those licensees. Mississippi does not provide the broad independent family-removal route available in states such as Minnesota.

Families and chosen people can still leave detailed wishes about vigil, clothing, ceremony, bodily presentation and participation in care. The licensed removal and funeral-service requirements remain part of the process.

ADP · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

PRESERVATION

Mississippi does not require routine embalming of every body. A body must, however, be buried, cremated or otherwise disposed of within 48 hours after death unless it is embalmed by a licensed embalmer or kept under refrigeration.

Mississippi also imposes preservation requirements for transportation when the destination cannot be reached within the state's specified time period. If transportation across a substantial distance is part of your plan, confirm the current requirements before moving the body.

Private family burial grounds and natural burial are legal in Mississippi.

Mississippi expressly recognizes private family cemeteries. A county board of supervisors may establish or designate the location of a private family cemetery within the county, and qualifying family burial grounds are treated separately from the state's commercial-cemetery system.

There is a special siting rule for a new cemetery proposed within 500 yards of a hospital or other medical facility where patients ordinarily remain overnight. Local zoning, land-use and health requirements should also be checked for the actual property before a grave is opened.

ADP · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Mississippi does not impose a verified statewide requirement that every burial use a conventional casket or concrete burial vault. An individual cemetery may impose its own rules.

CREMATION

Cremation is legal in Mississippi. Authorization comes from the person legally controlling disposition. Mississippi law also permits documented oral authorization in specified circumstances when it is reduced to a written record.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

Mississippi does not currently authorize alkaline hydrolysis as a method of human disposition.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

Mississippi does not currently authorize natural organic reduction as a method of human disposition.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Mississippi has existing anatomical-gift and donor-registration mechanisms. Register the decision during life rather than relying only on instructions left for family after death.

REGISTER · DONATE LIFE MISSISSIPPI →

Major organ or tissue procurement generally prevents whole-body acceptance by UMMC, although corneal donation is compatible with the program. If a registered donor is accepted, UMMC arranges transportation from within Mississippi and later cremation without charge to the family or estate. Cremated remains may be returned to the family if requested.

A financial Power of Attorney is a different instrument from your deathcare documents.

Mississippi recognizes Durable Powers of Attorney for financial and property matters, but no official general-purpose Mississippi financial POA form was located in our state research.

If you need a financial Power of Attorney, have one prepared for your circumstances rather than using the ADP disposition document as a substitute. Financial authority during life and authority over your body after death are separate legal jobs.

READ · MISSISSIPPI DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY LAW →

Decide who may reach your digital life and give explicit consent for the material you actually want disclosed.

Mississippi has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. You may leave directions concerning disclosure or nondisclosure through a service's online tool or through a will, trust, Power of Attorney or other record.

Access to the actual content of electronic communications is specially protected. If you want someone to be able to receive private email, messages or similar communications, say so explicitly rather than merely giving generic authority over your digital accounts.

ADP · DIGITAL LIFE →

Use it to identify accounts, devices, archives, photographs and correspondence; choose who should have access; state what should be preserved, transferred or destroyed; and expressly consent, where you want to, to disclosure of the content of electronic communications.

READ · MISSISSIPPI FIDUCIARY ACCESS TO DIGITAL ASSETS ACT →

Choose who can make health-care decisions for you and leave your own instructions for medical treatment.

Missouri recognizes both a Health Care Durable Power of Attorney, through which you appoint someone to make health-care decisions for you, and a Declaration / Living Will for instructions concerning death-prolonging procedures.

Missouri law provides model language for the Declaration. If the Declaration is not entirely in your own handwriting, it must be signed in the presence of two adult witnesses.

MISSOURI DECLARATION / LIVING WILL · STATUTORY LANGUAGE →

A Health Care Durable Power of Attorney is a separate document. Missouri requires certain important health-care powers to be expressly stated rather than assumed from a general grant of authority.

READ · MISSOURI DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY AUTHORITY →

Missouri lets you put a person you choose ahead of spouse and blood family for control of your body after death.

Missouri calls this the right of sepulcher: the right to choose and control the burial, cremation or other final disposition of your body.

To give that authority to someone you choose, Missouri uses a Durable Power of Attorney that expressly grants your attorney-in-fact the right of sepulcher. A generic Power of Attorney is not enough. The authority must be specifically written into the document.

The document can be deliberately limited to this single purpose. You do not have to give the person control over your money, property, banking or other affairs simply to give them authority over your final disposition.

ADP · MISSOURI LIMITED DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR RIGHT OF SEPULCHER →

A Missouri Durable Power of Attorney must be in writing, dated and signed, contain the required durability language, and be acknowledged before a notary or other officer authorized to take the acknowledgment. Missouri does not require two witnesses for this DPOA.

The right-of-sepulcher authority survives your death for the limited period necessary to carry out your disposition. The ADP form also provides for a successor attorney-in-fact and written acceptance by the people you appoint.

READ · MISSOURI RIGHT OF SEPULCHER LAW →

Put legal authority in the hands of someone you trust, then tell them exactly what you want protected after death.

Use the ADP Identity After Death & Chosen Family document for your name, pronouns, gender, clothing, grooming, bodily presentation, chosen relationships, obituary, memorial, photographs, privacy, who may see or participate in caring for your body, and who you do not want involved.

Missouri does not presently provide a specific statutory protection requiring a deceased person's chosen name, pronouns or gender identity to control the death record or funeral arrangements.

Pair your identity instructions with the Missouri Limited Durable Power of Attorney for Right of Sepulcher. The identity document records what you want. The Missouri document puts the person you chose ahead of the ordinary family hierarchy for the legal disposition decisions.

ADP · MISSOURI LIMITED DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR RIGHT OF SEPULCHER →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

Missouri keeps much of at-need funeral work inside its licensed funeral-service system.

Missouri regulates the professional preparation of bodies and the direction or supervision of burial and other disposition. Its funeral rules restrict unlicensed people from carrying out at-need funeral-establishment work involving final disposition, cremation, embalming, and care or preparation of the body.

An unlicensed person may transport a body when that transportation is arranged through a Missouri licensed funeral establishment or funeral director. The licensee remains responsible for the transportation arrangement.

Missouri does not provide the broad affirmative family-care route found in states such as Minnesota or Montana. Your people can still leave and carry out wishes concerning vigil, ceremony, clothing, presentation and participation within the limits of Missouri's licensed system.

ADP · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

EMBALMING

Missouri does not require every dead body to be embalmed. Embalming is not a universal prerequisite to immediate burial or direct cremation, although particular circumstances involving transportation or the condition of the body may trigger additional requirements.

Missouri expressly recognizes private family burial grounds.

A landowner may use Missouri's statutory family-burying-ground route to secure up to one acre of land for burial of the family and descendants. Under that route, the land is conveyed to the county commission in trust for the burial purpose and the deed is recorded.

Missouri also recognizes family burial grounds as a distinct cemetery category where burial spaces are not sold to the public and interments are restricted to people related by blood or marriage.

Local zoning, land-use, environmental and health rules still need to be checked for the actual property.

ADP · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Missouri does not impose a verified statewide requirement that every burial use a conventional casket or concrete burial vault. Individual cemeteries may impose their own requirements.

CREMATION

Cremation is legal in Missouri and must occur through a licensed cremation facility. Missouri's State Board provides the operational Cremation Authorization used by funeral establishments and crematories.

Missouri also allows a person to authorize their own cremation before death in writing. A valid advance cremation authorization may appear in a written document rather than waiting for someone else to authorize cremation after death.

MISSOURI STATE BOARD · CREMATION FORMS →

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

Missouri does not currently authorize alkaline hydrolysis as a method of human disposition.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

Missouri does not currently authorize natural organic reduction as a method of human disposition.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Missouri maintains the Donate Life Missouri Registry. An adult's valid first-person anatomical gift carries legal force and generally cannot simply be revoked by family after death.

If you do not want to donate, removing yourself from the registry is not necessarily the same thing as making a legally effective refusal of anatomical gifts. Missouri law provides a separate mechanism for recording a refusal.

DONATE LIFE MISSOURI REGISTRY →

The University of Missouri School of Medicine operates a Gift of Body Program for anatomical education and research. The program has its own Donation Agreement and currently requires the donor's signature and two witnesses; notarization is not required.

Acceptance at death is not guaranteed. Major organ donation generally prevents whole-body acceptance, although eye donation is compatible with the program. The family or estate is responsible for the initial funeral-home and transportation expenses required to deliver an accepted donor to the University's contracted funeral home in Columbia.

The University then pays the program's costs, including cremation and either return or program disposition of the cremated remains according to the donor's arrangements.

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI · GIFT OF BODY PROGRAM →

Missouri Durable Powers of Attorney can be broad or deliberately narrow.

Missouri permits a Durable Power of Attorney to grant authority over one or more express subjects or purposes. Certain powers must be specifically written into the document rather than assumed from general language.

This is why the ADP Right of Sepulcher form can give someone authority over your final disposition without giving that person authority over your bank accounts, property or ordinary financial affairs.

If you also need a general financial Durable Power of Attorney, treat it as a separate planning document drafted for the powers you actually want to grant.

READ · MISSOURI DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY POWERS →

Decide who may reach your digital life and be explicit about private communications.

Missouri's fiduciary-access law allows you to leave directions concerning disclosure or nondisclosure of digital assets through a service's online tool or through a will, trust, Power of Attorney or other record.

A direction made through a service's own online tool can take priority over contrary instructions left elsewhere when that tool remains available for you to modify.

Access to the actual content of electronic communications requires particular attention. If you want someone to receive private email, messages or similar communications, give express consent rather than relying on a generic instruction to handle your accounts.

ADP · DIGITAL LIFE →

Use it to identify accounts, devices, archives, photographs and correspondence; choose who should have access; state what should be preserved, transferred or destroyed; and expressly consent, where you want to, to disclosure of the content of electronic communications.

READ · MISSOURI DIGITAL-ASSET DIRECTIONS →

Choose who can make health-care decisions for you and leave instructions for the care you want.

Montana has existing forms for advance medical planning, including a Health Care Power of Attorney and Declaration of Living Will. You can appoint a health-care agent, name a backup and leave instructions about treatment if you later cannot make or communicate those decisions yourself.

Montana also maintains an End-of-Life Registry, where you may file an advance directive so it can be available when it is needed.

MONTANA HEALTH CARE & LIVING WILL FORMS →

If you have serious advanced illness or frailty:

Montana uses POLST, Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment. POLST is a portable medical-order form for people whose current medical condition makes orders about resuscitation and other life-sustaining treatment appropriate. It is not a replacement for ordinary advance planning.

MONTANA POLST · OFFICIAL FORM →

Montana lets you choose who will control the disposition of your body, and lets you leave legally recognized directions about what is to happen to it.

You may designate another adult to control the disposition of your remains after death. A validly designated person takes priority over a surviving spouse, children, parents, siblings and the rest of Montana's ordinary family hierarchy.

The designation is made in an affidavit or written instrument executed before a notary public. This is especially important if the person you trust is an unmarried partner, friend, chosen family member or anyone else who would not otherwise stand first in the statutory order.

Montana separately lets you leave disposition directions concerning the location, manner and conditions of your disposition and the funeral goods and services you want. Written directions are signed with two adult witnesses.

ADP · MONTANA DESIGNATION & DIRECTIONS FOR CONTROL OF FINAL DISPOSITION →

The ADP form brings those two Montana mechanisms together: the notarized designation of the person you want in control, followed by your witnessed directions for what that person should do.

Montana requires the person controlling disposition to substantially comply with attached lawful directions when sufficient resources are available to carry them out.

READ · MONTANA RIGHT OF DISPOSITION LAW →

Choose the person who will hold legal authority, then give them a precise record of who you are and what you want protected after death.

Use the ADP Identity After Death & Chosen Family document for your name, pronouns, gender, clothing, grooming, bodily presentation, chosen relationships, obituary, memorial, photographs, privacy, who may see or participate in caring for your body, and who you do not want involved.

Montana does not presently provide a specific statutory protection requiring a deceased person's chosen name, pronouns or gender identity to govern the death record or funeral arrangements.

Pair your identity instructions with the Montana Designation & Directions for Control of Final Disposition. The Montana document gives your chosen person priority over the default family hierarchy. The identity document gives that person the details you want them to defend and carry forward.

ADP · MONTANA DESIGNATION & DIRECTIONS FOR CONTROL OF FINAL DISPOSITION →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

Montana expressly allows the person with legal disposition authority to care for the dead without hiring a funeral director to perform the work.

Montana's funeral rules exempt an authorizing agent acting individually from the professional rules governing transportation, custody, preparation, funeral arrangements and disposition, provided that person follows the applicable state and local laws.

That means the legally authorized family member, partner, friend or other chosen person may personally take custody of the body, prepare it, arrange the funeral, transport it as permitted and carry out disposition.

Removal still requires the state's authorization from a physician or designee, advanced practice registered nurse, coroner or mortician. Family-directed deathcare does not erase the death certificate, removal authorization or other required vital-record procedures.

ADP · AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

Use it for washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, vigil, ceremony, transportation, who may participate, who may see or touch your body, and how much of your deathcare you want kept in the hands of your own people.

READ · MONTANA BOARD OF FUNERAL SERVICE RULES →

Home burial, private family burial grounds and natural burial are legal in Montana.

Montana expressly recognizes private family burial grounds where burial lots are not offered for sale. Its current death-registration system also provides for home burial and records the address or coordinates of the burial location.

Before choosing the grave site, check county and local zoning, land-use, environmental and health requirements for the actual property.

ADP · PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL →

Montana does not impose a verified statewide requirement that every burial use a conventional casket, concrete vault or embalming. Individual cemeteries may impose their own rules.

CREMATION

Cremation is legal in Montana. A body may not be cremated until at least 24 hours after death, and cremation must take place in a licensed crematory.

Cremation requires the appropriate authorization, and Montana's coroner authorization process also applies. Pacemakers and other potentially hazardous implants must be addressed before cremation.

Montana permits you to authorize your own cremation in advance. A preneed cremation authorization can also state what is to happen to your cremated remains.

ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS / AQUAMATION

Montana does not currently authorize alkaline hydrolysis as a method of human disposition. The Legislature has specifically studied whether Montana law should be expanded to include it, so this is an area where the law may change.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION / HUMAN COMPOSTING

Montana does not currently authorize natural organic reduction as a method of human disposition. It is also included in the state's study of possible future disposition methods.

ORGAN, EYE & TISSUE DONATION

Montana maintains a statewide organ and tissue donor registry. An adult's valid anatomical gift is legal authority for donation without additional permission from family or the estate, and family generally may not revoke or obstruct that decision after death.

MONTANA ORGAN & TISSUE DONATION →

Corneal donation is compatible with the program, but donation of internal organs prevents whole-body acceptance. The program generally requires prompt initial care after death.

For accepted donors, the program handles transportation within its current service radius around Bozeman. Additional transportation costs may fall to the family or estate when death occurs outside that area.

After anatomical study, the body is cremated. Cremated remains may be returned to the family without charge or buried through the program in Bozeman City Cemetery.

Montana already provides a statutory financial Power of Attorney.

The form lets you appoint an agent and successor agents and choose which categories of financial and property authority you want to grant.

A financial Power of Attorney is a document for authority during life. It does not replace the Montana disposition designation described above. Montana's own public guidance warns that ordinary Power of Attorney authority ends at death.

MONTANA FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY →

Decide who may reach your digital life and say explicitly whether they may receive your private communications.

Montana has adopted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. You may leave directions concerning disclosure or nondisclosure through a service's online tool or through a will, trust, Power of Attorney or other record.

When a service provides a modifiable online legacy or fiduciary tool, the direction left there can override a contrary direction in another estate-planning document.

Access to the actual content of electronic communications requires particular attention. If you want someone to receive private email, messages or similar material, give express consent rather than relying on a vague instruction to handle your digital accounts.

ADP · DIGITAL LIFE →

Use it to identify accounts, devices, archives, photographs and correspondence; choose who should have access; state what should be preserved, transferred or destroyed; and expressly consent, where you want to, to disclosure of the content of electronic communications.

READ · MONTANA FIDUCIARY ACCESS TO DIGITAL ASSETS LAW →

POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE

What it does: Lets you appoint the person who may make health-care decisions for you if you become unable to make them yourself. Nebraska law provides a statutory form and permits you to name a successor attorney in fact.

To make it valid: The document must be in writing, identify you and the person you appoint, specifically authorize that person to make health-care decisions if you become incapable, and be dated. You must either sign before at least two qualified adult witnesses or acknowledge the document before a notary public. Nebraska restricts who may serve as a witness, including your spouse, parent, child, grandchild, sibling, presumptive heir, known devisee, attending physician, romantic or dating partner, health-care attorney in fact, and certain other people connected to your care or insurance.

NEBRASKA POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE →

DECLARATION REGARDING LIFE-SUSTAINING TREATMENT

What it does: Records your directions concerning withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment if you become unable to make treatment decisions and are in a terminal condition or persistent vegetative state as defined by Nebraska law.

To make it valid: The declaration must be signed by you, or by another person at your direction, and witnessed by two adults or acknowledged before a notary public. Nebraska places additional restrictions on who may serve as a witness.

NEBRASKA DECLARATION FOR LIFE-SUSTAINING TREATMENT →

WRITTEN DIRECTIONS FOR FINAL DISPOSITION

Nebraska law allows you to leave written instructions concerning preparation and final disposition of your remains. The person or people who would otherwise have the right to control disposition are required to faithfully carry out those directions.

The directions may appear in a will or another written instrument. Nebraska law specifically provides that instructions contained in such a document are to be carried out immediately, even if a will has not yet been admitted to probate or is later found invalid in other respects.

If your wishes differ from what relatives might choose after your death, put them in writing while you can still speak for yourself and make sure the people who will actually need them have copies.

ADP: NEBRASKA WRITTEN DIRECTIONS FOR FINAL DISPOSITION →

READ THE NEBRASKA DISPOSITION LAW →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record the name, pronouns, gender and bodily presentation you want respected after death; who you recognize as family; who may wash, dress, shroud or view your body; what may be said publicly about you; and who you do not want involved.

In Nebraska, use this together with your written final-disposition directions. The planning document records the details of how you want to be cared for and remembered. Nebraska's disposition law gives legal force to the written directions you leave concerning preparation and final disposition.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record what should happen to your body between death and final disposition: washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, religious or nonreligious ritual, embalming preferences, funeral or no funeral, memorial and the people you want present.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

NEBRASKA PROFESSIONAL REQUIREMENT: Nebraska reserves important parts of the legal disposition process to licensed funeral professionals. The funeral director and embalmer in charge completes the nonmedical portions of the death certificate. Removal of a body from Nebraska for final disposition requires a transit permit issued by the funeral director and embalmer having charge of the body. Interment, disinterment and reinterment must be performed under the direct supervision of a licensed funeral director and embalmer.

These requirements matter when planning family-directed care. They establish professional control over specific legal acts surrounding disposition; they do not erase the decedent's statutory right to leave written directions for preparation and final disposition.

NEBRASKA DEATH CERTIFICATE, TRANSIT & DISPOSITION REQUIREMENTS →

BURIAL: Burial is a lawful form of disposition in Nebraska.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: Nebraska law recognizes that burial sites may exist on private land, but the statewide research did not establish a clear general statutory route authorizing the creation of a new full-body grave on any ordinary private residential parcel. Do not read statutory silence as a statewide permission. Check county and municipal land-use rules, public-health requirements, property restrictions and the rules governing the particular parcel before planning a private-land burial. Any interment itself remains subject to Nebraska's requirement for direct supervision by a licensed funeral director and embalmer.

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated. Nebraska requires a cremation permit before a dead human body may be cremated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No affirmative authorization for alkaline hydrolysis of human remains was established in the current Nebraska research. Do not infer authorization from Nebraska provisions concerning alkaline hydrolysis or tissue digestion involving animals.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No affirmative Nebraska authorization was established in the current research.

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: Nebraska law permits anatomical gifts and also expressly allows written final-disposition instructions to direct all or part of the body to qualifying teaching institutions, universities, colleges, licensed hospitals and other authorized therapeutic or educational recipients.

NEBRASKA STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY

What it does: Lets you appoint an agent to handle property and financial matters. A Nebraska power of attorney created under the Uniform Power of Attorney Act is durable unless it expressly says that incapacity terminates it. The statutory financial form does not authorize your agent to make health-care decisions.

To make it valid: A Nebraska financial power of attorney must be acknowledged before a notary public or another person legally authorized to take acknowledgments.

NEBRASKA STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY →

A will, beneficiary designations and any necessary guardianship or dependent-care planning belong here as separate pieces of the plan. A financial power of attorney terminates at death and does not replace a will.

DIGITAL LIFE

Decide what should happen to your accounts, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, devices, archives and other digital material. Record what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private, and who should handle it.

Nebraska's digital-assets law recognizes fiduciary authority over digital property, but access depends on the kind of fiduciary authority granted, the user's own directions, applicable law and the custodian's terms of service. A power of attorney can also give an agent authority concerning digital assets during life.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

NEBRASKA DIGITAL-ASSET LAW →

POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE

What it does: Lets you appoint an agent to make health-care decisions for you if you cannot make them yourself and lets you place instructions, limitations and end-of-life wishes directly into the document.

To make it valid: The power of attorney must be signed by you. Nevada generally requires either acknowledgment before a notary public or the signatures of two qualified adult witnesses who personally know you. Nevada imposes additional execution requirements in certain care settings, including when the principal resides in a hospital, residential facility for groups or facility for skilled nursing.

NEVADA POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE →

CHOOSE WHO CONTROLS BURIAL OR CREMATION

Nevada law lets you arrange your own burial or cremation in advance and lets you place another person in legal control of your remains after death. A person specifically designated in a legally valid document, or through the statutory affidavit Nevada provides for this purpose, receives priority over the ordinary next-of-kin hierarchy.

This is especially important if the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone who would not otherwise stand first in Nevada's statutory order.

NEVADA LAW: AUTHORITY OVER BURIAL, CREMATION & REMAINS →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want around your body after death.

Pair these instructions with Nevada's legal mechanism for placing control of your remains in the hands of the person you trust. The planning document records what you want. The legal designation determines who has authority to protect those wishes when you are no longer there to insist upon them yourself.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED CARE: Nevada's vital-statistics law does not write a licensed funeral director into every death as the only person capable of acting. Its death-registration provisions expressly refer to the “funeral director or person acting as undertaker.” When someone other than a funeral director is acting as undertaker, that person can participate in completing the disposition information required for the death record.

This does not remove the licensing requirements attached to particular professional services or regulated disposition facilities. It does mean that Nevada law itself recognizes a person acting as undertaker outside the ordinary funeral-director role.

EMBALMING: Nevada does not make embalming a universal prerequisite to lawful disposition. A funeral establishment, cemetery, crematory or other disposition facility cannot simply require embalming in every case merely as a condition of accepting the body. Specific public-health circumstances and other statutory requirements can still alter what is necessary in an individual case.

NEVADA DEATH REGISTRATION & PERSON ACTING AS UNDERTAKER →

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: The statewide research did not establish a general Nevada statute giving every private landowner an automatic right to create a new full-body grave on an ordinary residential parcel. Check the law attached to the actual land, including county or municipal land-use rules, health requirements, cemetery law and property restrictions, before treating private-land burial as available.

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: Legal. Nevada expressly includes alkaline hydrolysis within its statutory definition of cremation.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: Legal. Nevada expressly defines natural organic reduction and includes it within the state's regulated cremation and disposition framework.

CASKETS & ALTERNATIVE DISPOSITION: Nevada law does not permit a crematory to require that human remains be placed in a casket for flame cremation, alkaline hydrolysis or natural organic reduction. The container requirements applicable to the particular process still apply.

NEVADA DEAD-BODY, CREMATION, AQUAMATION & NOR LAW →

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Nevada's Uniform Power of Attorney Act contains a statutory form for appointing an agent to handle property and financial matters. This authority is separate from the health-care power of attorney.

A financial power of attorney can be durable during incapacity, but an agent's authority under it ends at the principal's death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designation or Nevada's separate rules governing control of human remains.

NEVADA FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY LAW & STATUTORY FORM →

DIGITAL LIFE

Decide what should happen to your accounts, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, devices, archives and other digital material. Record what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

Nevada allows a user to give directions concerning disclosure of digital assets through an online tool or, where the statute permits, through a will, trust, power of attorney or other record. If the user has given a valid direction through an online tool, that direction can take priority over a contrary direction contained elsewhere.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

NEVADA FIDUCIARY ACCESS TO DIGITAL ASSETS ACT →

NEW HAMPSHIRE ADVANCE DIRECTIVE

New Hampshire's statutory advance directive combines a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care with a Living Will. It lets you name the person who will make health-care decisions if you lose capacity and record your own instructions concerning treatment and end-of-life care.

NEW HAMPSHIRE ADVANCE DIRECTIVE →

DESIGNATION OF PERSON TO HAVE CUSTODY & CONTROL OF REMAINS

New Hampshire lets you choose who will have custody and control of your body after death. A competent adult may make the designation in a written document signed by that person. If there is no effective designation, authority passes through the statutory priority order.

This is particularly important when the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone who would not otherwise receive priority under New Hampshire's next-of-kin hierarchy.

ADP: NEW HAMPSHIRE CUSTODY & CONTROL OF REMAINS →

READ NEW HAMPSHIRE RSA 290:17 →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen-family relationships, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, photographs, marker, privacy and access wishes.

Pair these instructions with a designation under RSA 290:17. The planning document records how you want to be cared for and represented after death; the statutory designation places custody and control of your remains in the hands of the person you choose.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: New Hampshire law expressly accommodates deathcare handled by the next of kin or the person designated to have custody and control of the body. The vital-record system contains procedures for cases in which no funeral director is involved. The next of kin or designated agent can receive the body, obtain the medical certification, provide the required personal and disposition information, obtain the burial permit and complete the required death-registration process.

This is a real legal pathway, not merely informal family participation around a funeral home. A family or designated agent planning to use it should follow the state's death-registration and permit procedures closely and check any additional requirements attached to the chosen disposition.

NEW HAMPSHIRE VITAL RECORDS & FAMILY-DIRECTED DISPOSITION LAW →

PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL: Legal. New Hampshire expressly recognizes burial on private property outside an established burial ground.

Local zoning regulations control where they exist. If there is no applicable local regulation, RSA 289:3 supplies the statutory siting requirements. When property containing such a burial site is later transferred, the existence and location of the burial site must be recorded in the deed.

NEW HAMPSHIRE PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL LAW →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated. New Hampshire generally requires at least 48 hours to pass after death before cremation may occur, subject to the exceptions provided by law.

NEW HAMPSHIRE CREMATION WAITING PERIOD →

CARE BEFORE CREMATION: New Hampshire regulates the holding of unembalmed human remains by crematories. If cremation cannot take place within the period allowed for unrefrigerated holding, the remains must be refrigerated in accordance with the crematory requirements.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: Prohibited. New Hampshire law expressly states that no person may dispose of human remains by alkaline hydrolysis.

NEW HAMPSHIRE ALKALINE-HYDROLYSIS PROHIBITION →

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No affirmative authorization for natural organic reduction was established in the current New Hampshire research. This is different from alkaline hydrolysis, which the state expressly prohibits.

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: New Hampshire recognizes anatomical gifts under its anatomical-gift law. Donation arrangements should be made directly with the appropriate organ, tissue or

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Use a durable financial power of attorney to choose who may handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority, health-care authority and custody of your body after death are separate legal roles. You may choose the same person for each if that is what you want, but one appointment should not be assumed to create the others.

A financial power of attorney ends at death and does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or the RSA 290:17 designation controlling your remains.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

New Hampshire has enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. The law governs when fiduciaries may obtain access to digital assets and communications from custodians. Your own directions remain important because access to an account and instructions about what you actually want done with its contents are not the same thing.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

NEW HAMPSHIRE DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

PROXY DIRECTIVE — DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE

Appoints the person who will make health-care decisions for you if you become unable to make them yourself.

DOWNLOAD NEW JERSEY PROXY DIRECTIVE →

INSTRUCTION DIRECTIVE — LIVING WILL

Records your own instructions, values and treatment preferences for circumstances in which you cannot make health-care decisions yourself. New Jersey allows you to complete a Proxy Directive, an Instruction Directive, or both.

NEW JERSEY ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FORMS & INSTRUCTIONS →

APPOINTMENT OF AGENT TO CONTROL THE FUNERAL & DISPOSITION OF REMAINS

New Jersey provides an official Cemetery Board form for choosing the person who will control your funeral arrangements and final disposition after death. The appointed agent receives sole authority to make those decisions, subject to law.

Who needs it: This is especially important when the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone other than the relative who would otherwise receive priority under New Jersey law.

To make it valid: Complete and sign the form in the presence of two witnesses and a notary. Both witnesses sign the document and the notary completes the acknowledgment.

The form also allows you to name a successor agent. New Jersey restricts appointment of an owner, employee or representative of a funeral home, cemetery or crematory unless that person is related to you as permitted by law.

DOWNLOAD OFFICIAL NEW JERSEY FUNERAL & DISPOSITION AGENT FORM →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, grave marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after your death.

Pair these instructions with New Jersey's official Funeral and Disposition Agent appointment. The planning document records how you want to be cared for and represented. The official appointment places legal authority in the hands of the person you choose.

NEW JERSEY FUNERAL & DISPOSITION AGENT FORM →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record what should happen to your body, who should be present, how you should be washed, dressed or shrouded, whether there should be a viewing or vigil, what rituals are welcome or forbidden, your embalming preferences, and whether you want a funeral or memorial.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

NEW JERSEY'S PROFESSIONAL STRUCTURE: New Jersey places substantial parts of the preparation, funeral and disposition process within its licensed mortuary and cemetery system. State law defines funeral directing broadly enough to include professional preparation for burial or other disposition and the direction or supervision of disposition.

The practical autonomy point in New Jersey is therefore especially clear: choose the person who will hold legal authority, put your wishes in writing, and use the official Funeral and Disposition Agent form if the default next-of-kin hierarchy does not place the right person in control.

BURIAL: Legal and regulated.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: New Jersey law recognizes private and family burial grounds in particular contexts, but the deep statewide research did not establish a general rule allowing an individual simply to create a new full-body grave on any ordinary residential parcel. New Jersey's cemetery, mortuary and land-use structure is substantial. Check the legal status of the actual land, local zoning and health requirements, cemetery law and any property restrictions before treating a new private-land burial as available.

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No affirmative current New Jersey authorization for alkaline hydrolysis of human remains was established in the deep closure research.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: Legal. New Jersey enacted P.L.2025, c.143 to create a regulated framework for natural organic reduction. The law was approved September 11, 2025 and became operative in July 2026. Natural organic reduction must take place through the licensed facilities and professionals governed by that statutory system.

NEW JERSEY NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION LAW →

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: New Jersey recognizes anatomical gifts under its anatomical-gift law. Organ and tissue donation and

DURABLE FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Use a financial power of attorney to give a trusted person authority over property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from authority over your body after death.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or New Jersey's separate Funeral and Disposition Agent appointment.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital property. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

New Jersey's fiduciary-access law governs when an executor, agent, trustee or other fiduciary may obtain access to digital assets from a custodian. Your own directions remain important because legal access to an account does not itself tell the fiduciary what you wanted preserved, erased, published or kept private.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

ADVANCE HEALTH-CARE DIRECTIVE

New Mexico's Uniform Health-Care Decisions Act allows you to leave health-care instructions, appoint an agent to make health-care decisions for you, or do both in the same advance directive.

The directive lets you name the person who should speak for you if you lose capacity and record your own wishes concerning treatment, life-sustaining care and other health-care decisions.

NEW MEXICO UNIFORM HEALTH-CARE DECISIONS ACT →

YOUR OWN CREMATION & DISPOSITION OF CREMATED REMAINS

New Mexico law allows an adult to authorize their own cremation and the lawful disposition of their cremated remains in advance through a qualifying written statement or an express provision in a will.

ADP: NEW MEXICO AUTHORIZATION OF MY OWN CREMATION & DISPOSITION OF CREMATED REMAINS →

GENERAL CONTROL AFTER DEATH: New Mexico uses a statutory priority order to determine who may authorize disposition when the decedent has not supplied controlling authorization. The deep closure research did not establish a separate general-purpose state appointment form equivalent to New Jersey's Funeral and Disposition Agent form.

Do not assume that a health-care agent continues to control the body after death merely because that person had authority to make medical decisions during life. Put disposition wishes into the legal form appropriate to the disposition you are choosing and make sure the person who will have authority after death has the documents.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

New Mexico's default disposition hierarchy can matter sharply when chosen family and legal family are different. Written wishes should be kept where the person who will actually have legal authority can find them immediately.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: New Mexico's vital-record rules expressly provide for a death in which disposition is not under the supervision of a licensed New Mexico funeral service practitioner or direct disposer. When another person takes charge of the body, the institution or person releasing it records who received the body and the intended method and place of disposition.

The person taking charge is advised of the responsibility to obtain the necessary medical certification and file the death record within the required period and before final disposition. New Mexico therefore has a real legal route for after-death care and disposition that is not automatically dependent upon hiring a funeral director to take control of the entire process.

NEW MEXICO VITAL-RECORD & FAMILY-DIRECTED DISPOSITION RULES →

CARE OF AN UNEMBALMED BODY: New Mexico's funeral-service rules require preservation once the applicable period has passed. The current state-law materials identify embalming or refrigeration when a body has been held for more than 24 hours, subject to the circumstances and requirements established by law.

For a family caring for someone at home, this makes cooling part of the practical plan from the beginning rather than something to consider only when a funeral establishment becomes involved.

PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL: New Mexico recognizes burial on private property within its funeral-service regulatory framework. The state's own funeral-service materials identify private-property burial as permissible when the property has been designated as private family burial space through the county clerk.

The designation does not erase other rules attached to the land. Check the county, the actual parcel, land-use restrictions, access issues and any other requirements that apply before establishing the burial space.

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated. New Mexico's current human-cremation regulations define cremation through direct flame.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No current affirmative authorization for alkaline hydrolysis of human remains was established in the deep closure research. Legislation introduced in 2025 would have expanded New Mexico's cremation framework to include alkaline hydrolysis, but that legislation did not become law.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No current affirmative authorization was established in the deep closure research. The same 2025 legislative effort would have expanded the law to natural organic reduction, but it did not become law.

The failure of proposed legislation is not itself a declaration that either process is criminally prohibited. It means the research did not establish an enacted New Mexico framework authorizing them for human disposition.

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: New Mexico has adopted the Revised Uniform Anatomical Gift Act and recognizes legally authorized anatomical gifts. Organ and tissue donation and

NEW MEXICO STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY

New Mexico's Uniform Power of Attorney Act includes a statutory form for appointing an agent to handle property and financial matters. The statutory financial power of attorney does not authorize the agent to make health-care decisions.

A financial power of attorney ends at death and does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or the separate legal authority governing disposition of your body.

NEW MEXICO UNIFORM POWER OF ATTORNEY ACT →

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

New Mexico has enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. A user may give directions concerning disclosure of digital assets through an online tool or, where no controlling online direction exists, through a will, trust, power of attorney or other record recognized by the statute.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

NEW MEXICO REVISED UNIFORM FIDUCIARY ACCESS TO DIGITAL ASSETS ACT →

NEW YORK HEALTH CARE PROXY

What it does: Lets you appoint an agent to make health-care decisions for you if you lose the ability to make those decisions yourself. You may also name an alternate agent and include instructions or limitations concerning your care.

To make it valid: You must sign and date the proxy in the presence of two adult witnesses. The witnesses must also sign. The person you appoint as your health-care agent cannot serve as a witness.

DOWNLOAD OFFICIAL NEW YORK HEALTH CARE PROXY →

APPOINTMENT OF AGENT TO CONTROL DISPOSITION OF REMAINS

New York lets you choose the person who will control what happens to your body after death. Public Health Law §4201 recognizes a written appointment of an agent to control the disposition of your remains.

The authority is broad. New York's disposition law covers the care and transportation of the body and decisions concerning burial, cremation, natural organic reduction and embalming.

This is particularly important if the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone who would not otherwise receive priority under New York's statutory hierarchy.

DOWNLOAD OFFICIAL NEW YORK APPOINTMENT OF AGENT TO CONTROL DISPOSITION OF REMAINS →

READ NEW YORK PUBLIC HEALTH LAW §4201 →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

In New York, pair these instructions with the official Appointment of Agent to Control Disposition of Remains. The planning document records how you want to be cared for and represented. The statutory appointment places legal authority in the hands of the person you choose.

NEW YORK APPOINTMENT OF AGENT TO CONTROL DISPOSITION OF REMAINS →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

NEW YORK'S PROFESSIONAL STRUCTURE: New York places important legal parts of after-death care and disposition within its licensed funeral system. Death registration, permits and the legal movement of a body toward burial, cremation or another disposition are tied to statutory procedures involving the funeral director or undertaker.

A burial, cremation, natural organic reduction or transit permit must be obtained before final disposition or removal as required by law. Family and chosen family may still participate extensively in washing, dressing, vigils, rituals and other intimate care, but the legal disposition process should not be mistaken for a completely funeral-director-free system.

NEW YORK BURIAL, CREMATION, NOR & TRANSIT PERMIT LAW →

BURIAL: Legal and regulated.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL: New York law provides a legal structure for private and family cemeteries. It should not be read as permission to place a grave anywhere on ordinary residential land without further legal work.

New York's Not-for-Profit Corporation Law permits land to be dedicated by deed or devise exclusively as a family cemetery and imposes statutory conditions on private and family cemetery land, including acreage and distance requirements. Local land-use, health, access, deed and property restrictions may also affect a particular parcel.

If you intend to bury someone on family or private land, establish the legal status of the burial ground before death rather than assuming that ownership of the land alone creates a right to bury there.

NEW YORK PRIVATE & FAMILY CEMETERY LAW →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No affirmative authorization for human alkaline hydrolysis was established in the current New York research. Do not read the absence of an established statutory framework as a declaration that the process is criminally prohibited.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: Legal and regulated. New York expressly authorizes natural organic reduction and regulates facilities performing it. The process must take place through the statutory facility and permit framework.

NEW YORK NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION LAW →

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: New York's anatomical-gift law permits donation of the whole body or body parts for transplantation, therapy, research or education. Organ and tissue donation and

NEW YORK ANATOMICAL GIFT LAW →

NEW YORK STATUTORY SHORT FORM POWER OF ATTORNEY

New York provides a statutory power-of-attorney form for appointing an agent to handle financial and property matters during life. This authority is separate from the Health Care Proxy and from the Appointment of Agent to Control Disposition of Remains.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or the separate appointment controlling your body and funeral arrangements.

NEW YORK STATUTORY SHORT FORM POWER OF ATTORNEY →

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

New York's fiduciary-access law governs access to digital assets by executors, administrators, trustees, agents and other fiduciaries. Your own directions remain important because authority to obtain digital material does not itself say what you wanted preserved, destroyed, published, transferred or kept private.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

NEW YORK DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY

What it does: Lets you appoint a health-care agent to make medical decisions for you if you become unable to make or communicate those decisions yourself. The statutory form also allows you to give instructions, place limitations on your agent's authority and name successor agents.

To make it valid: You must sign the document in the presence of two qualified witnesses and acknowledge it before a notary public. North Carolina law restricts who may serve as a witness.

NORTH CAROLINA HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY →

ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR A NATURAL DEATH — LIVING WILL

North Carolina also provides a statutory advance directive for recording decisions concerning life-prolonging measures and certain end-of-life treatment if you later meet the conditions stated in the directive and cannot make those decisions yourself.

NORTH CAROLINA ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR A NATURAL DEATH →

DIRECTIONS & DELEGATION FOR FINAL DISPOSITION

North Carolina gives you unusually broad authority to decide what happens to your body after death. An adult may determine the type, place and method of disposition and may delegate the right to make disposition decisions to another person.

Your directions or delegation may be made through one of the mechanisms recognized by state law, including a health-care power of attorney, will, qualifying preneed document, or a separate written statement signed by you and witnessed by two adults.

This separate written statement is particularly useful when you want chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or another person outside the default family hierarchy to control disposition.

ADP: NORTH CAROLINA DIRECTIONS & DELEGATION FOR FINAL DISPOSITION →

READ NORTH CAROLINA G.S. 130A-420 →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

North Carolina's disposition law is especially useful when chosen family and legal family are different. Pair these instructions with a valid delegation of disposition authority so that the person you trust is legally positioned to protect them.

If you leave no controlling authorization, North Carolina uses a statutory priority hierarchy. That hierarchy begins with legal family but eventually includes, in the circumstances defined by law, a person who exhibited special care and concern for the decedent. A written delegation made during life is far stronger than leaving that question to be resolved after death.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: North Carolina's vital-record law expressly recognizes a “funeral director or person acting as funeral director” who first assumes custody of the body. That person is responsible for filing the death certificate, obtaining the medical certification and supplying the information concerning final disposition.

This creates a real statutory opening for family-directed care rather than making a licensed funeral director the only person contemplated by the death-registration law. It does not eliminate licensing requirements for services or facilities that North Carolina separately regulates.

NORTH CAROLINA DEATH REGISTRATION LAW →

EMBALMING & REFRIGERATION: Embalming is not a universal prerequisite to disposition. North Carolina imposes preservation and refrigeration requirements in particular regulated settings, including funeral establishments and crematories holding unembalmed human remains. Those facility rules should not be rewritten as though every family caring for its own dead is automatically required to embalm.

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: North Carolina permits burial outside a conventional commercial cemetery, and state law allows an adult to specify the place of their own disposition. The actual burial site must still satisfy the law attached to the particular parcel.

Before establishing a grave on private land, check county and municipal zoning, local health requirements, property restrictions, access and any rules governing the creation or recording of a family burial ground. Ownership of the land alone should not be treated as the entire legal inquiry.

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: Legal and regulated. North Carolina expressly recognizes alkaline hydrolysis within its funeral and disposition statutes.

NORTH CAROLINA CREMATION & ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS LAW →

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No affirmative authorization for natural organic reduction was established in the current North Carolina research. Recent amendments use broader terminology concerning reduction and reduction facilities, but the deep closure research did not establish enacted language authorizing natural organic reduction itself as a human disposition method. Do not infer authorization from the broader terminology alone.

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: North Carolina's anatomical-gift law recognizes gifts of the body or body parts for transplantation, therapy, research and education.

NORTH CAROLINA STATUTORY POWER OF ATTORNEY

North Carolina's Uniform Power of Attorney Act provides a statutory form for appointing an agent to handle property and financial matters. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from the right to control disposition of your body.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or your separate final-disposition directions and delegation.

NORTH CAROLINA UNIFORM POWER OF ATTORNEY ACT →

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

North Carolina has enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It governs access to digital property by personal representatives, agents, trustees and other fiduciaries and recognizes directions a user has given concerning disclosure of digital assets.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

NORTH CAROLINA DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

NORTH DAKOTA HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVE

What it does: Lets you appoint a health-care agent, leave your own health-care instructions, or do both. North Dakota's statutory directive also provides space for anatomical-gift decisions and wishes concerning what should happen to your body after death.

To make it valid: The directive must be signed and dated. You must either acknowledge your signature before a notary public or sign in the presence of two qualified adult witnesses who also sign the directive. North Dakota law restricts who may serve as a witness.

NORTH DAKOTA HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVE & STATUTORY FORM →

FINAL DISPOSITION DIRECTIONS

North Dakota allows a competent adult to prepare a signed and dated written statement directing the cremation or other lawful disposition of their body after death. A funeral establishment may rely on a qualifying statement without obtaining the consent or concurrence of another person.

North Dakota's disposition hierarchy also gives priority to a competent adult designated by the decedent in a statement that complies with the statutory requirements.

If legal family and chosen family are different, do not leave control to assumption. Put the disposition directions and the person you want involved into the legally recognized written structure while you are alive.

ADP: NORTH DAKOTA FINAL DISPOSITION DIRECTIONS →

READ NORTH DAKOTA CHAPTER 23-06 →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

North Dakota's Health Care Directive itself can contain wishes concerning disposition of your body, and state law separately recognizes written final-disposition directions. Use the ADP planning document for the intimate detail, then place the legally operative instructions where the people handling your death can find them immediately.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: North Dakota law recognizes an “individual acting as funeral practitioner” in its disposition-permit structure. The law therefore contemplates circumstances in which someone other than a licensed funeral practitioner is carrying out the practical work surrounding final disposition.

The individual acting in that role must still follow North Dakota's death-registration, burial-transit permit and disposition requirements. Family-directed care does not erase the legal paperwork attached to moving and disposing of a human body.

NORTH DAKOTA BURIAL, TRANSIT & DISPOSITION LAW →

TRANSPORT & PRESERVATION: North Dakota's rules allow a burial-transit permit for ordinary cases without embalming or refrigeration when the body will reach its destination within 48 hours. Refrigeration can extend that period to 72 hours. Different and substantially stricter requirements apply in certain communicable-disease cases.

NORTH DAKOTA BURIAL-TRANSIT & PRESERVATION RULES →

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: North Dakota expressly provides a route for burial outside a registered cemetery. A body may be buried in another place requested by relatives and friends when the burial is authorized by the Department of Health and Human Services and the applicable state requirements are followed.

This means private-land burial is legally possible, but ownership of the land alone is not sufficient. Obtain the required state authorization and check the actual parcel for local land-use, property, access and other applicable restrictions before burial.

NORTH DAKOTA PRIVATE-LAND BURIAL LAW →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No affirmative current authorization for alkaline hydrolysis of human remains was established in the deep North Dakota closure research. Earlier legislative material discussing alkaline hydrolysis is not treated as proof of current authorization.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No affirmative current authorization for natural organic reduction was established in the deep North Dakota research.

For both processes, absence of an established statutory authorization here should not be rewritten as a claim that North Dakota expressly criminalizes the method.

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: North Dakota's anatomical-gift law recognizes gifts of a body or body part for transplantation, therapy, research or education.

DURABLE FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Use a financial power of attorney to appoint the person who may handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from authority over final disposition.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations, the Health Care Directive or your separate final-disposition directions.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

North Dakota has enacted the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It governs access to digital assets by personal representatives, agents, trustees and other fiduciaries and recognizes legally effective directions concerning disclosure.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

NORTH DAKOTA DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE

What it does: Lets you appoint an adult to make health-care decisions for you if you lose the capacity to make informed health-care decisions yourself. Ohio treats this authority separately from an ordinary financial power of attorney.

To make it valid: The document must satisfy Ohio's statutory execution requirements. You must sign it, and your signature must either be acknowledged before a notary public or witnessed by two qualified adults. Ohio restricts who may serve as a witness.

OHIO DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE →

DECLARATION — LIVING WILL

Ohio separately recognizes a declaration concerning the use or continuation of life-sustaining treatment when the statutory conditions are met. Use it to record your own end-of-life treatment instructions rather than leaving every decision to your health-care agent.

OHIO LIVING WILL LAW →

APPOINTMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE FOR DISPOSITION

Ohio lets an adult of sound mind appoint another adult to control decisions concerning the body after death. The representative may be given authority over the location, manner and conditions of disposition, funeral arrangements, and burial, cremation or another lawful manner of final disposition.

Ohio provides the statutory declaration itself. It allows you to appoint a representative and successor representative and to record preferences concerning disposition and funeral arrangements.

This is especially important when the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone who would not otherwise receive priority under Ohio's default disposition hierarchy.

OHIO STATUTORY APPOINTMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE FOR DISPOSITION →

READ OHIO'S DISPOSITION-REPRESENTATIVE LAW →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Pair these instructions with Ohio's statutory Appointment of Representative for Disposition. The planning document records how you want to be cared for and represented. The statutory declaration places legal authority over disposition and funeral decisions in the hands of the person you choose.

OHIO APPOINTMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE FOR DISPOSITION →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: Ohio's death-registration law expressly recognizes the “funeral director or other person in charge of the final disposition of the remains.” The person in charge of final disposition is responsible for obtaining the required personal information, presenting the death certificate for medical certification and filing it as required by law.

This language matters. Ohio's vital-statistics law does not describe a licensed funeral director as the only person who can ever be in charge of final disposition. At the same time, Ohio separately regulates funeral directing and licensed professional services. Family-directed care therefore has to be planned around the particular acts the family intends to perform rather than assuming either that a funeral home must control everything or that professional licensing rules disappear.

OHIO DEATH REGISTRATION & FINAL DISPOSITION LAW →

EMBALMING & REFRIGERATION: Ohio does not impose immediate embalming as a universal requirement. A dead human body held for more than 48 hours before final disposition must be embalmed or refrigerated at a temperature below 40°F, subject to the requirements and exceptions provided by law.

OHIO EMBALMING & REFRIGERATION REQUIREMENTS →

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL: Ohio law expressly recognizes land set apart for private burial use. A private burial ground may be established and recorded within Ohio's statutory cemetery structure.

This should not be read as permission to place a grave anywhere on an ordinary residential parcel merely because you own it. Establish the legal status of the burial ground and check county or municipal land-use rules, health requirements, access, deed restrictions and any other requirements attached to the actual property before burial.

OHIO PRIVATE BURIAL-GROUND LAW →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No affirmative authorization for alkaline hydrolysis of human remains was established in the deep Ohio closure research. Ohio statutes concerning alkaline hydrolysis in other contexts should not be treated as authority for human disposition.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No affirmative authorization for natural organic reduction was established in the deep Ohio closure research.

For both processes, the absence of an established statutory authorization here should not be rewritten as a claim that Ohio expressly criminalizes the method.

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: Ohio's anatomical-gift law recognizes gifts of the body and body parts for transplantation, therapy, research and education.

OHIO ANATOMICAL GIFT LAW →

OHIO STATUTORY FORM POWER OF ATTORNEY

Ohio provides a statutory financial power-of-attorney form for appointing an agent to handle property and financial matters. The form allows you to grant particular categories of authority, including authority concerning digital assets when properly selected and permitted by law.

Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from the statutory appointment controlling disposition of your body. A financial power of attorney terminates at death and does not replace a will or beneficiary designations.

OHIO STATUTORY FORM POWER OF ATTORNEY →

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

Ohio has enacted the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. A user may give directions concerning disclosure of digital assets through an online tool or, where the statute permits, through a will, trust, power of attorney or other record. A direction made through a qualifying online tool can take priority over a contrary direction elsewhere.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

OHIO DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

OKLAHOMA ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR HEALTH CARE

Oklahoma's current advance-directive law lets you record instructions concerning end-of-life medical care and appoint a health-care proxy to make decisions within the authority provided by the directive.

IMPORTANT 2027 CHANGE: Oklahoma enacted a new Uniform Health Care Decisions Act in 2026, but it does not take effect until July 1, 2027. Until then, use the advance-directive law and execution requirements currently in force. Documents prepared after July 1, 2027 should be checked against the new Act.

OKLAHOMA ADVANCE DIRECTIVE INFORMATION & FORM →

2026 UNIFORM HEALTH CARE DECISIONS ACT — EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 2027 →

APPOINT A REPRESENTATIVE FOR FINAL DISPOSITION

Oklahoma lets you place another person in control of your final disposition through a written appointment. Under Title 21 §1158, a representative appointed by the decedent through a qualifying executed and witnessed written document receives priority over the ordinary family hierarchy.

This is particularly important when the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone who would otherwise stand behind a spouse or blood relatives after your death.

ADP: OKLAHOMA DISPOSITION REPRESENTATIVE APPOINTMENT →

READ OKLAHOMA TITLE 21 §1158 →

If there is no controlling appointment or other qualifying direction from the decedent, Oklahoma follows its statutory priority order for the right and duty of disposition.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Oklahoma's disposition-representative law makes the legal appointment especially useful when chosen family and legal family are different. Pair the appointment with detailed written instructions so the person you trust has both the authority and the information necessary to carry out your wishes.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FUNERAL & DISPOSITION PROCEDURE: Oklahoma regulates funeral directing, embalming, cremation and the professional handling of human remains. Family participation in washing, dressing, shrouding, vigils and ritual should be separated from the licensed acts and legal paperwork attached to the particular disposition.

Do not assume that choosing family-directed care eliminates death-registration, transportation, permit, cemetery or crematory requirements. Determine which regulated acts are actually involved in the disposition you have chosen and arrange only the professional involvement the law requires.

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: Oklahoma law contains specific rules governing the establishment and location of cemeteries and burial grounds. Burial on private property therefore cannot be reduced to a simple rule that ownership of the land is enough.

Private-land burial may be possible where the burial ground satisfies Oklahoma's cemetery-siting law and any required municipal or local authorization. Check the actual parcel, local land-use rules, public-health requirements, property restrictions, access and the statutory cemetery requirements before establishing a grave.

OKLAHOMA CEMETERY & BURIAL-GROUND LAW →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No current affirmative authorization for alkaline hydrolysis of human remains was established in the deep Oklahoma closure research. Proposed legislation concerning alkaline hydrolysis does not establish present legal authorization.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No current affirmative authorization was established. Oklahoma's Legislature passed HB 3660 in 2026, which would have created a statutory and licensing framework for natural organic reduction, but the bill was vetoed on May 12, 2026 and did not become law.

The absence of an enacted framework should not be rewritten as a claim that Oklahoma expressly criminalizes either aquamation or natural organic reduction.

OKLAHOMA HB 3660 — 2026 NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION LEGISLATION →

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: Oklahoma recognizes anatomical gifts under its anatomical-gift law. Organ and tissue donation and

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Use a financial power of attorney to appoint the person who may handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from the right to control disposition of your body.

A financial power of attorney terminates at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or Oklahoma's separate disposition-representative appointment.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

Oklahoma's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act took effect November 1, 2024. It governs fiduciary access to digital property and recognizes directions concerning disclosure made through qualifying online tools and, where applicable, wills, trusts, powers of attorney and other records.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

OKLAHOMA DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

OREGON ADVANCE DIRECTIVE

What it does: Lets you appoint a health-care representative to make health-care decisions for you if you become unable to make them yourself and lets you record your own instructions, values and preferences concerning treatment and end-of-life care.

To make it valid: Oregon permits the advance directive to be executed before two adult witnesses or acknowledged before a notary public. The attending physician or attending health-care provider and the person appointed as your health-care representative or alternate health-care representative may not serve as witnesses.

OREGON ADVANCE DIRECTIVE & OFFICIAL FORM →

OREGON ADVANCE DIRECTIVE LAW →

APPOINTMENT OF PERSON TO MAKE DECISIONS CONCERNING DISPOSITION OF REMAINS

Oregon gives you substantial control over what happens to your body after death. An adult of sound mind may direct any lawful manner of disposition through a signed written instrument and may delegate disposition authority to another adult.

Oregon provides a statutory appointment form for this purpose. You may appoint the person you want to make decisions concerning disposition of your remains and name an alternate if the first person cannot or will not act.

This is especially important when the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone who would not otherwise receive priority under Oregon's statutory hierarchy.

OREGON APPOINTMENT OF PERSON TO MAKE DECISIONS CONCERNING DISPOSITION OF REMAINS →

Because Oregon already supplies the statutory mechanism and form, the ADP does not substitute its own appointment form.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Pair these instructions with Oregon's statutory disposition appointment. The planning document records how you want to be cared for and represented. The statutory appointment places legal authority over disposition in the hands of the person you choose.

OREGON DISPOSITION AUTHORITY & APPOINTMENT LAW →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: Oregon expressly provides a route for families who choose to handle disposition without hiring a licensed funeral director. The Oregon Health Authority maintains a Death Record Registration Without a Funeral Director procedure and provides the materials necessary for a family to complete the vital-record process.

A family may make the arrangements itself so long as no person accepts payment for performing duties that would constitute the licensed practice of a funeral service practitioner. The family still has to complete Oregon's death-registration and disposition requirements.

OREGON: DEATH RECORD REGISTRATION WITHOUT A FUNERAL DIRECTOR →

This makes Oregon one of the states where family-directed deathcare exists as an explicit legal and administrative pathway rather than merely as informal participation around a funeral establishment.

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: Legal when Oregon's statutory conditions are satisfied. Oregon expressly provides for burial on private property outside a conventional cemetery.

The person arranging the burial must have ownership of the property or the property owner's consent and obtain written approval from the local planning authority. Permanent records of the disposition must be maintained as required by law. The existence of the burial must also be disclosed when the property is later sold.

Local land-use approval is therefore part of the legal route itself. Owning the land does not eliminate that requirement.

OREGON MORTUARY & CEMETERY BOARD: BURIAL ON PRIVATE PROPERTY →

READ OREGON ORS CHAPTER 97 →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: Legal and regulated. Oregon's disposition law expressly includes alkaline hydrolysis within its alternative-disposition framework.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: Legal and regulated. Oregon expressly includes natural organic reduction within the state's alternative-disposition framework.

Oregon regulates alkaline hydrolysis and natural organic reduction through licensed alternative-disposition facilities. Legal authorization of the methods does not mean that either process may be performed privately outside the facility and licensing structure.

OREGON CREMATION, ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS & NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION LAW →

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: Oregon recognizes anatomical gifts of the body or body parts for transplantation, therapy, research and education. Organ and tissue donation and

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Use a financial power of attorney to appoint the person who may handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from Oregon's statutory authority over disposition of your body.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or the Appointment of Person to Make Decisions Concerning Disposition of Remains.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

Oregon has enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. A user may give directions concerning disclosure of digital assets through an online tool or, where applicable, through a will, trust, power of attorney or other record. A qualifying direction made through an online tool can take priority over a contrary direction contained elsewhere.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

OREGON DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY & LIVING WILL

Pennsylvania law lets you appoint a health-care agent to make health-care decisions for you when you cannot make or communicate those decisions yourself. You may also use a living will to give your own instructions concerning life-sustaining treatment and end-of-life care.

To make it valid: A health-care power of attorney or living will must be dated and signed by you and witnessed by two adults. Pennsylvania does not require notarization for these documents.

PENNSYLVANIA HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY & LIVING WILL LAW →

FINAL DISPOSITION & FUNERAL AUTHORITY

Pennsylvania does not provide the same simple, free-standing disposition-agent appointment found in states such as Oregon or Ohio. When no controlling direction exists, Pennsylvania law places authority over burial and disposition primarily with the surviving spouse and then other members of the decedent's family according to the statutory structure.

That authority is subject to a valid will and to evidence establishing the decedent's contrary intent. Your own written disposition wishes therefore matter, but Pennsylvania should not be treated as though it has a statutory form allowing anyone to appoint an unrelated disposition representative through a simple stand-alone document.

If the person you want protecting your funeral, body and burial wishes is chosen family rather than the person who would receive authority under Pennsylvania's default hierarchy, this is an area for deliberate advance planning. Put your wishes into your estate documents and make sure the people involved know where those documents are.

PENNSYLVANIA DISPOSITION AUTHORITY — 20 PA.C.S. §305 →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Pennsylvania's default disposition structure makes advance documentation particularly important when chosen family and legal family are different. The ADP document records the intimate detail of how you want to be cared for and represented, but it does not by itself replace whatever legally operative estate or disposition planning is necessary to protect those wishes under Pennsylvania law.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: Pennsylvania's vital-record system does not describe a licensed funeral director as the only person who can ever carry out the death-registration process. State materials assign responsibility to the “funeral director or person in charge of interment” and also recognize a person acting as the funeral director for purposes of reporting the death.

This creates a procedural opening for family-directed arrangements. It does not erase Pennsylvania's separate licensing laws or the legal requirements attached to transportation, permits, cemeteries, crematories and other regulated acts. Determine which parts of the care the family intends to perform and which acts require professional or institutional involvement.

PENNSYLVANIA REPORTING A DEATH & DISPOSITION PROCEDURE →

DISPOSITION / TRANSIT PERMIT: After the death has been registered, the required permit must be obtained for disposition in a Pennsylvania cemetery or for transportation of the body out of Pennsylvania.

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL: Pennsylvania law expressly recognizes private cemeteries and private family cemeteries. A private family cemetery is a burial place in which burial plots are restricted to members of a family or people connected by the relationships specified by law.

Pennsylvania also recognizes burial grounds situated on private property and provides legal protection for access to certain cemeteries and burial grounds.

The existence of these private and family burial structures does not establish that ownership of an ordinary residential parcel, by itself, creates an unrestricted right to establish a new grave. If you intend to create or use a family burial ground, check the legal status of the land, municipal and county requirements, zoning, health rules, access, deeds and any requirements governing establishment of the cemetery before burial.

PENNSYLVANIA CEMETERY & PRIVATE FAMILY CEMETERY LAW →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No current affirmative authorization for alkaline hydrolysis of human remains was established in the deep Pennsylvania closure research.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No current affirmative authorization for natural organic reduction was established in the deep Pennsylvania closure research.

For both processes, absence of an established statutory authorization should not be rewritten as a claim that Pennsylvania expressly criminalizes the method.

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: Pennsylvania recognizes anatomical gifts of the body and body parts for transplantation, therapy, research and education. Organ and tissue donation and

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Pennsylvania law allows you to appoint an agent to handle property and financial matters during life. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from authority over burial and final disposition.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or the estate and disposition planning needed to establish your wishes concerning your body and funeral.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

Pennsylvania has enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It governs access to digital property by personal representatives, agents, trustees and other fiduciaries and recognizes legally effective directions concerning disclosure of digital assets.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

PENNSYLVANIA DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

RHODE ISLAND DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE

What it does: Lets you appoint a health-care agent to make health-care decisions for you when you are unable to make those decisions yourself and lets you record instructions concerning your care.

To make it valid: Rhode Island's statutory form must be signed and dated and executed either before two qualified adult witnesses or before a notary public. Rhode Island law restricts who may serve as a witness.

RHODE ISLAND DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE & STATUTORY FORM →

FUNERAL PLANNING AGENT DESIGNATION

Rhode Island lets an adult of sound mind appoint a funeral planning agent to make decisions concerning funeral preparation, funeral goods and services, burial and disposition of the body, including cremation.

The person you appoint may be a relative or a non-relative. You may also name an alternate agent. This gives Rhode Island residents a direct way to place after-death authority in the hands of chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or another trusted person rather than leaving control to the default family hierarchy.

Rhode Island provides the statutory designation form. The form includes the principal's designation, the funeral planning agent's acceptance, witness execution and notarization. Read the agent's acceptance carefully: Rhode Island's statute also attaches responsibilities concerning payment of the principal's funeral expenses to the person accepting the appointment.

RHODE ISLAND FUNERAL PLANNING AGENT DESIGNATION & STATUTORY FORM →

READ RHODE ISLAND FUNERAL PLANNING AGENT LAW →

Because Rhode Island already supplies the statutory designation, the ADP does not substitute its own appointment form.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Pair these instructions with Rhode Island's Funeral Planning Agent Designation when the person you trust should have legal authority over funeral and disposition decisions. The ADP document records how you want to be cared for and represented. The statutory designation determines who has the authority to act.

RHODE ISLAND FUNERAL PLANNING AGENT DESIGNATION →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

PROFESSIONAL FUNERAL STRUCTURE: Rhode Island regulates funeral directing, embalming, preparation and disposition of dead human bodies through its professional licensing system. State law prohibits the unlicensed practice of funeral directing and other regulated funeral-service activities.

This makes Rhode Island materially different from states that expressly provide a family with a complete administrative route for acting in place of a funeral director. Family and chosen family can record and protect wishes, participate in vigils and intimate care, and use the Funeral Planning Agent law to control arrangements, but the legal disposition process should not be described as a general funeral-director-free system.

RHODE ISLAND FUNERAL-SERVICE LICENSING LAW →

BURIAL: Legal and regulated.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: Rhode Island law recognizes burial grounds and graves located on private land. The deep closure research did not, however, establish a general prospective statewide rule allowing an ordinary landowner to create a new residential grave simply by owning the property.

If you intend to establish a new burial place on private land, check the municipality, the actual parcel, zoning and land-use requirements, public-health rules, property restrictions and any cemetery or burial-ground requirements before relying upon the site.

RHODE ISLAND PRIVATE BURIAL-GROUND LAW →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated. Rhode Island's current statutory definition of cremation uses direct flame.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No current affirmative authorization for human alkaline hydrolysis was established. Rhode Island considered legislation in 2026 that would have added alkaline hydrolysis to the state's authorized disposition framework. H7070 passed the House but did not become law.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No current affirmative authorization was established. The same 2026 legislation would have authorized natural organic reduction, but it did not become law.

The failure of H7070 does not by itself establish that either process is criminally prohibited. It means the proposed statutory authorization was not enacted and the deep current-law research did not establish another operative framework authorizing either method.

RHODE ISLAND H7070 — 2026 ALTERNATIVE-DISPOSITION LEGISLATION →

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: Rhode Island recognizes anatomical gifts of the body and body parts for transplantation, therapy, research and education.

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Use a financial power of attorney to appoint someone to handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from the Funeral Planning Agent's authority over funeral and disposition arrangements.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or Rhode Island's Funeral Planning Agent Designation.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

Rhode Island has enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. A user may give directions concerning disclosure of digital assets through an online tool or, where permitted by the statute, through a will, trust, power of attorney or other record. A qualifying direction made through an online tool can override a contrary direction contained elsewhere.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

RHODE ISLAND DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

SOUTH CAROLINA HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY

What it does: Lets you appoint an agent to make health-care decisions for you if you become unable to make those decisions yourself. The statutory form also lets you give instructions concerning life-sustaining treatment, artificial nutrition and hydration, organ donation and other health-care decisions.

To make it valid: South Carolina's Health Care Power of Attorney must substantially follow the statutory form, be signed and dated, and be witnessed by two qualified adults. South Carolina law contains specific restrictions on who may serve as a witness.

SOUTH CAROLINA HEALTH CARE POWER OF ATTORNEY & STATUTORY FORM →

CREMATION & CREMATION-AGENT DIRECTIONS

South Carolina gives a person significant authority to arrange cremation in advance. State law allows a decedent to authorize their own cremation and the disposition of their cremated remains before death.

South Carolina also recognizes a person designated by the decedent in a will or another verified and attested document for purposes of cremation authorization. This can be particularly important when the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or someone who would not otherwise receive priority under the statutory family hierarchy.

ADP: SOUTH CAROLINA CREMATION & CREMATION-AGENT DIRECTIONS →

SOUTH CAROLINA CREMATION AUTHORIZATION LAW →

IMPORTANT: The authority described here is tied to South Carolina's cremation law. Do not assume that a cremation-agent designation automatically creates equivalent authority over every other possible form of final disposition.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

If cremation is your intended disposition, South Carolina's advance cremation provisions can be used alongside these instructions to place legal authority where you want it. The ADP planning document records the intimate detail of your wishes; the legally operative cremation authorization establishes the authority recognized by state law.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: South Carolina expressly recognizes a route for families who choose not to engage a funeral home or funeral director and instead handle disposition themselves without compensation.

The South Carolina Department of Public Health describes these cases as natural burials. When a family proceeds without a funeral home, the family member who first takes custody of the body performs the death-registration role ordinarily handled by the funeral home. DPH provides the paperwork and procedure for doing this.

SOUTH CAROLINA DPH: DEATH REGISTRATION WITHOUT A FUNERAL HOME →

BURIAL REMOVAL TRANSIT PERMIT: The family-directed route does not eliminate the state's paperwork. The required Burial Removal Transit Permit authorizes removal of the body from the place of death, transportation and eventual burial or other lawful disposition.

This makes South Carolina one of the states with an explicit administrative path for family-directed deathcare rather than merely informal family participation around a funeral establishment.

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: South Carolina law expressly recognizes cemeteries, burial grounds and graves located on private property. State law also protects access to private-property burial grounds for family members, descendants, cemetery plot owners and people lawfully participating in a burial.

The existence of lawful private-property graves does not mean every parcel is automatically suitable for a new burial. Before establishing a grave, check the actual property, county and municipal land-use rules, public-health requirements, deed restrictions, access and any requirements governing the burial ground itself.

SOUTH CAROLINA PRIVATE-PROPERTY CEMETERY & BURIAL-GROUND LAW →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: Legal and regulated. South Carolina's current funeral-service law expressly includes alkaline hydrolysis within the statutory definition of cremation.

SOUTH CAROLINA CREMATION & ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS LAW →

CREMATION TIMING & EMBALMING: South Carolina generally requires at least 24 hours between death and cremation, subject to the statutory infectious-disease exception. A crematory may not refuse to accept a body merely because it has not been embalmed.

SOUTH CAROLINA CREMATION PROCEDURE →

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No current affirmative authorization for natural organic reduction was established in the deep South Carolina closure research. The absence of an established statutory framework should not be rewritten as a claim that South Carolina expressly criminalizes the method.

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: South Carolina recognizes anatomical gifts of the body and body parts for transplantation, therapy, research and education. Organ and tissue donation and

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

South Carolina law allows you to appoint an agent to handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from authority concerning your body after death.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or any separate document used to establish your cremation and disposition wishes.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

South Carolina has enacted the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It governs access to digital assets by personal representatives, agents, trustees and other fiduciaries and provides a legal structure for directions concerning disclosure of digital material.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

SOUTH CAROLINA DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE

What it does: Lets you appoint an attorney-in-fact to make health-care decisions for you when you become unable to make those decisions yourself.

To make it valid: South Dakota permits the document to be executed before two adult witnesses or acknowledged before a notary public. State law also permits qualifying electronic presence for witnessing under its remote-witness provisions.

SOUTH DAKOTA DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR HEALTH CARE →

DECLARATION — LIFE-SUSTAINING TREATMENT

South Dakota separately recognizes a declaration for recording your own instructions concerning life-sustaining treatment. The declaration may likewise be executed before two adult witnesses or acknowledged before a notary public.

SOUTH DAKOTA DECLARATION FOR LIFE-SUSTAINING TREATMENT →

DESIGNATION OF PERSON TO CONTROL FINAL DISPOSITION

South Dakota begins from a strong statutory principle: every person has the right to direct the manner in which their body is disposed of after death.

You may also designate the person you want to control disposition. A person properly designated by the decedent receives first priority under South Dakota's disposition hierarchy, ahead of the ordinary family order.

The designation is made by a notarized affidavit, and South Dakota supplies the statutory form. The affidavit may also include specific lawful instructions concerning disposition. The designated person must substantially comply with those instructions when sufficient resources are available.

This makes the form particularly useful when the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone who would not otherwise receive priority after your death.

SOUTH DAKOTA DISPOSITION DESIGNEE LAW →

SOUTH DAKOTA STATUTORY DISPOSITION AFFIDAVIT →

Because South Dakota already supplies the statutory affidavit, the ADP does not substitute its own appointment form.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Pair these instructions with South Dakota's statutory disposition affidavit. The ADP planning document records how you want to be cared for and represented. The notarized statutory designation places legal authority in the hands of the person you choose.

SOUTH DAKOTA STATUTORY DISPOSITION AFFIDAVIT →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: South Dakota's vital-record law expressly recognizes a “funeral director, or person acting as such.” The funeral director or person acting in that role who first assumes custody of the body is responsible for completing and filing the required fact-of-death record within the statutory period.

The law also assigns disposition paperwork to the funeral director or person acting as such. This creates a genuine statutory route for someone other than a licensed funeral director to perform the administrative role surrounding a family-directed disposition.

Family-directed care does not eliminate death registration, permits, transportation rules, cemetery requirements or other laws attached to the chosen disposition.

SOUTH DAKOTA DEATH REGISTRATION LAW →

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / HOME BURIAL: South Dakota law recognizes cemeteries and burial grounds, but the deep closure research did not establish a general statewide mechanism allowing an ordinary landowner to create a new full-body residential grave simply by owning the property.

If you intend to establish a burial place on private land, investigate the actual parcel before relying upon it. Check county and municipal land-use rules, public-health requirements, cemetery law, access, deed restrictions and any requirements for establishing or recording the burial ground.

SOUTH DAKOTA CEMETERY LAW →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated. South Dakota's current statutory definition of cremation describes reduction of a dead human body through heat and flame.

CREMATION WAITING PERIOD: South Dakota generally requires at least 24 hours after death before cremation, subject to the waiver permitted by law.

CARE OF AN UNEMBALMED BODY AT A CREMATORY: An unembalmed body accepted by a crematory may remain in an ordinary holding facility for no more than eight hours. After that period, refrigeration is required under the cremation statutes.

SOUTH DAKOTA CREMATION LAW →

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: No current affirmative authorization for alkaline hydrolysis of human remains was established in the deep South Dakota closure research.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No current affirmative authorization for natural organic reduction was established in the deep South Dakota closure research.

For both processes, absence of an established statutory authorization should not be rewritten as a claim that South Dakota expressly criminalizes the method.

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: South Dakota recognizes anatomical gifts of the body and body parts for transplantation, therapy, research and education. Organ and tissue donation and

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Use a financial power of attorney to appoint someone to handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from South Dakota's statutory designation of the person who will control disposition of your body.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or the statutory disposition affidavit.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

South Dakota has enacted a fiduciary-access-to-digital-assets law. It governs access to digital property by personal representatives, agents, trustees and other fiduciaries and provides a legal structure for directions concerning disclosure of digital assets.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

SOUTH DAKOTA DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

TENNESSEE ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR HEALTH CARE

What it does: Lets you appoint an agent to make health-care decisions for you when you cannot make those decisions yourself and lets you record your own instructions concerning treatment and end-of-life care.

To make it valid: Tennessee permits the Advance Directive for Health Care to be executed using the state's witness or notarization requirements. If witnesses are used, neither witness may be the person appointed as your agent, and at least one witness must be someone who is not related to you by blood, marriage or adoption and who would not be entitled to any part of your estate.

TENNESSEE ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR HEALTH CARE & OFFICIAL FORM →

DIRECTIONS FOR FINAL DISPOSITION

Tennessee lets you leave legally recognized written directions controlling the location, manner and conditions of disposition of your body and the arrangements for funeral goods and services.

The directions may appear in a letter of instructions, will, trust document, advance directive or another qualifying written instrument. They must be signed by you and either acknowledged before a notary public or witnessed by two adults who are at least eighteen years old and of sound mind.

These directions matter because Tennessee's statutory family hierarchy applies when there are no controlling disposition directions or qualifying preneed arrangements. Writing the directions yourself allows your own decisions to enter the process before that default hierarchy takes over.

ADP: TENNESSEE DIRECTIONS FOR FINAL DISPOSITION →

TENNESSEE DISPOSITION-DIRECTIONS LAW →

TENNESSEE RIGHT-OF-DISPOSITION HIERARCHY →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Pair these instructions with Tennessee's legally recognized disposition directions. The ADP planning document records the intimate detail of how you want to be cared for and represented; the qualifying disposition document gives your directions legal force within Tennessee's disposition structure.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED CARE: Tennessee regulates funeral directing, embalming and other professional funeral-service activities. Families may still participate directly in care of their dead, but the existence of family participation should not be confused with an exemption from every licensing, death-registration, transportation, permit or disposition requirement.

For a family-directed burial, identify the particular acts the family intends to perform and the paperwork attached to the chosen disposition rather than assuming either that a funeral home must control everything or that Tennessee's professional licensing rules disappear.

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL: Tennessee recognizes private and family cemeteries. State guidance explains that establishment of a private cemetery is not regulated through a single statewide cemetery-establishment process and is principally a matter of local jurisdiction.

If you intend to establish a family cemetery on private land, Tennessee guidance directs you to check local zoning and planning requirements, obtain the required soil evaluation for the burial site, and place the burial ground on the property deed. Existing cemetery and burial protections continue to apply once graves are present.

Owning the land is therefore only the beginning. Check the county or municipality and the actual parcel before a burial takes place.

TENNESSEE PRIVATE CEMETERIES, HUMAN REMAINS & BURIALS →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: Legal and regulated. Tennessee enacted a statutory framework for alkaline hydrolysis in 2021 and regulates it within the state's funeral and disposition system.

TENNESSEE ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS LAW →

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No current affirmative authorization for natural organic reduction was established in the deep Tennessee closure research. Legislation introduced in 2026 would have created a legal framework for organic human reduction, but it did not become law.

The failure of that legislation should not be rewritten as a claim that Tennessee expressly criminalizes the method. It means the proposed authorization was not enacted and no other current affirmative authorization was established.

TENNESSEE SB2620 — 2026 ORGANIC HUMAN REDUCTION LEGISLATION →

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: Tennessee recognizes anatomical gifts of the body and body parts for transplantation, therapy, research and education. Organ and tissue donation and

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Use a financial power of attorney to appoint someone to handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from your directions concerning your body after death.

A financial power of attorney ends at death. It does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or Tennessee's legally recognized directions concerning final disposition.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

Tennessee has enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It governs access to digital property by personal representatives, agents, trustees and other fiduciaries and provides a legal structure for directions concerning disclosure of digital assets.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

TENNESSEE DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

MEDICAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

What it does: Lets you appoint an agent to make health-care decisions for you if you become unable to make those decisions yourself.

Texas provides a statutory Medical Power of Attorney form. Follow the execution instructions on the current form carefully, including the state's witness or notarization requirements and restrictions on who may serve as a witness.

TEXAS MEDICAL POWER OF ATTORNEY & OFFICIAL FORM →

DIRECTIVE TO PHYSICIANS AND FAMILY OR SURROGATES

Texas separately provides a living-will form for recording your own instructions concerning life-sustaining treatment if you develop a terminal or irreversible condition and become unable to communicate your wishes.

TEXAS DIRECTIVE TO PHYSICIANS & OFFICIAL FORM →

APPOINTMENT FOR DISPOSITION OF REMAINS

Texas lets you appoint the person you want to control disposition of your body after death. The statutory appointment can include special directions concerning how your remains are to be handled and allows you to name successor agents.

This is particularly important when the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone who would not otherwise receive priority under Texas's default disposition hierarchy.

Texas places the statutory form directly in Health & Safety Code §711.002. The appointed agent must accept the appointment before acting.

Read the acceptance carefully: Texas law makes an agent who accepts the appointment personally liable for the reasonable costs of interment, although the agent may seek reimbursement from the decedent's estate when funds are available.

TEXAS APPOINTMENT FOR DISPOSITION OF REMAINS & STATUTORY FORM →

Because Texas already supplies the statutory appointment, the ADP does not substitute its own form.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Pair these instructions with Texas's statutory Appointment for Disposition of Remains. The ADP planning document records how you want to be cared for and represented. The statutory appointment places legal disposition authority in the hands of the person you choose.

TEXAS APPOINTMENT FOR DISPOSITION OF REMAINS →

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: Texas's vital-statistics law expressly recognizes a “funeral director or person acting as funeral director.” The person required to file the death certificate is therefore not described exclusively as a licensed funeral director.

This language creates an administrative route for family-directed arrangements, but it does not erase Texas's separate funeral-service licensing laws. Washing, dressing, shrouding, vigils and other intimate family care should be distinguished from acts that Texas separately regulates as professional funeral practice.

TEXAS DEATH-REGISTRATION LAW →

When planning a funeral-home-free burial, establish in advance who will obtain the medical certification, complete and file the death certificate, secure the required burial-transit authorization, transport the body and communicate with the cemetery or burial site.

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL: Texas law recognizes private and family cemeteries, but establishing a new cemetery is heavily dependent upon the location of the property. Chapter 711 contains restrictions and exceptions tied to municipal boundaries, population, distance and the characteristics of the particular site.

Do not assume that owning rural or residential land is enough. Before establishing a family burial ground, check the parcel against Chapter 711, county and municipal requirements, zoning and land-use rules, deed restrictions, access and any requirements for recording or maintaining the cemetery.

TEXAS CEMETERY & PRIVATE BURIAL LAW →

TEXAS FUNERAL SERVICE COMMISSION: CONSUMER & FAMILY-CEMETERY INFORMATION →

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: Texas does not currently provide general authorization for alkaline hydrolysis as an ordinary funeral-disposition option.

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No current affirmative authorization for natural organic reduction was established. Texas considered legislation in 2025 that would have created a statutory NOR framework, but HB 2200 failed to pass to engrossment on May 12, 2025 and did not become law.

The failure of HB 2200 should not be rewritten as a claim that Texas expressly criminalizes NOR. It means the proposed authorization was not enacted and no other current affirmative authorization was established in the deep closure research.

TEXAS HB 2200 — NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION LEGISLATIVE HISTORY →

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: Texas recognizes anatomical gifts of organs, tissues and the body for transplantation, therapy, research and education.

STATUTORY DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY

Texas provides a statutory durable financial power-of-attorney form for appointing an agent to handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity.

Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from the Appointment for Disposition of Remains. A financial power of attorney terminates at death and does not replace a will, beneficiary designations or the statutory disposition appointment.

TEXAS STATUTORY DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY →

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

Texas has enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It governs access to digital property by personal representatives, agents, trustees and other fiduciaries and recognizes directions concerning disclosure of digital assets through qualifying online tools and estate-planning records.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

TEXAS DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

UTAH ADVANCE HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVE

What it does: Lets you appoint a health-care agent and alternate agent to make health-care decisions for you and lets you record your own wishes concerning medical treatment, end-of-life care and organ donation.

Utah reorganized its advance-directive law effective January 1, 2026. Use the current form and current execution requirements rather than an older Utah advance-directive form saved from before that date.

UTAH ADVANCE HEALTH CARE DIRECTIVE & STATUTORY FORM →

DISPOSITION DESIGNEE & ADVANCE DIRECTIONS

Utah gives you two related forms of control over your body after death: you may leave advance directions concerning what is to happen to your body, and you may designate the person who will have the right and duty to control disposition.

Advance directions: Utah law lets you direct the preparation, type and place of disposition of your remains. This includes directions concerning burial, cremation and alkaline hydrolysis.

Disposition designee: You may separately designate the person who will control disposition of your body. A properly designated person receives priority in Utah's statutory hierarchy.

The written instrument used for these purposes must satisfy Utah's statutory execution requirements. The relevant disposition statutes recognize an instrument acknowledged before a notary public or executed with the formalities required for a Utah will.

A financial power of attorney that terminates at death is not, merely by itself, the disposition designation contemplated by Utah's statute.

ADP: UTAH DISPOSITION DESIGNEE & ADVANCE DIRECTIONS →

UTAH ADVANCE DISPOSITION DIRECTIONS & RIGHT-OF-DISPOSITION LAW →

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Utah's disposition-designee law is particularly useful when chosen family and legal family are different. Pair the ADP identity document with a legally effective designation and advance disposition directions so the person you trust has both the authority to act and a clear record of what you want.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →

FAMILY-DIRECTED DEATHCARE: Utah expressly provides an administrative route for disposition when no funeral service director is retained. Its vital-record law recognizes a dispositioner: the person responsible for disposition when the services of a funeral service director are not used.

The dispositioner performs the death-registration responsibilities assigned by Utah law and may take possession of, transport and dispose of the body within the state's legal framework. Utah requires the state registrar to make instructions available for people acting as dispositioners.

This is a genuine funeral-home-free pathway. It does not eliminate the death certificate, medical certification, burial-transit permit or the requirements attached to the chosen place and method of disposition.

UTAH VITAL RECORDS & DISPOSITIONER LAW →

BURIAL-TRANSIT PERMIT: Utah specifically provides for a burial-transit permit when disposition is performed by someone other than a funeral service director.

UTAH BURIAL-TRANSIT PERMIT LAW →

BURIAL: Legal.

PRIVATE-LAND / FAMILY BURIAL: Utah recognizes cemeteries and private burial arrangements, but the deep closure research did not establish a single statewide rule under which ownership of an ordinary residential parcel alone is sufficient to create a new family grave.

If you intend to bury on private land, establish the legal status of the proposed burial place before relying upon it. Check the county or municipality, zoning and land-use rules, health requirements, cemetery law, access, deed restrictions and any requirements governing creation or recording of the burial ground.

FLAME CREMATION: Legal and regulated.

AQUAMATION / ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS: Legal and regulated. Utah law expressly recognizes alkaline hydrolysis as a lawful form of disposition and regulates authorization, custody, records and operation of alkaline-hydrolysis facilities.

UTAH CREMATION & ALKALINE HYDROLYSIS LAW →

NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION: No current affirmative authorization for natural organic reduction was established in the deep Utah closure research.

Utah considered SB 49 during the 2026 legislative session. The bill would have added natural organic reduction throughout the state's funeral-service statutes and created detailed requirements for NOR facilities, authorization, records and disposition of the resulting soil. The bill did not become operative law.

The failure of SB 49 should not be rewritten as a claim that Utah expressly criminalizes natural organic reduction. It means the proposed statutory framework was not enacted and no other current affirmative authorization was established.

UTAH SB 49 — 2026 NATURAL ORGANIC REDUCTION LEGISLATIVE HISTORY →

ORGAN, TISSUE DONATION: Utah recognizes anatomical gifts of the body and body parts for transplantation, therapy, research and education. Organ and tissue donation and

FINANCIAL POWER OF ATTORNEY

Utah law allows you to appoint an agent to handle property and financial matters during life and incapacity. Financial authority is separate from health-care authority and from the right to control disposition of your body.

A financial power of attorney that terminates at death does not substitute for Utah's disposition designation. Use the disposition mechanism itself if you want a particular person to control what happens to your body after death.

DIGITAL LIFE

Record what should happen to your accounts, devices, files, photographs, correspondence, websites, archives and other digital material. Decide what should be preserved, transferred, deleted or kept private and who should handle it.

Utah has enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act. It governs fiduciary access to digital property and recognizes legally effective directions concerning disclosure through qualifying online tools and estate-planning records.

ADP: DIGITAL LIFE →

UTAH DIGITAL-ASSETS LAW →

VERMONT ADVANCE DIRECTIVE FOR HEALTH CARE

What it does: Vermont's advance directive lets you appoint an agent to make health-care decisions for you, give your own instructions concerning treatment and end-of-life care, make anatomical-gift decisions, and include directions that reach beyond medical care into what happens to your body after death.

To make it valid: A Vermont advance directive must be dated and signed and executed before two adult witnesses. Vermont law restricts certain people, including the appointed agent and specified close relatives, from serving as witnesses. Vermont also recognizes qualifying remote witnessing under its current law.

VERMONT ADVANCE DIRECTIVE LAW →

VERMONT ADVANCE DIRECTIVE EXECUTION REQUIREMENTS →

DISPOSITION OF YOUR REMAINS & FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS

Vermont's advance-directive law gives you an unusually direct way to control what happens after death. Your advance directive may include instructions concerning the manner of disposition of your remains and funeral goods and services.

You may also appoint an individual to arrange the disposition of your remains and funeral goods and services. This makes the advance directive especially useful when the person you trust is chosen family, an unmarried partner, a friend, or anyone who would not otherwise be the person expected to control your arrangements.

VERMONT DISPOSITION & FUNERAL AUTHORITY IN AN ADVANCE DIRECTIVE →

Because Vermont already places this authority inside its advance-directive structure, the ADP does not substitute a separate state-specific disposition-agent form.

IDENTITY AFTER DEATH & CHOSEN FAMILY

Record your name, pronouns, gender, bodily presentation, chosen family, clothing, hair, viewing, obituary, memorial, marker, photographs, privacy instructions and the people you do or do not want involved after death.

Pair these instructions with the disposition provisions in your Vermont advance directive. The ADP planning document records the intimate detail of how you want to be cared for and represented. The advance directive can identify the person who will actually arrange disposition and funeral goods and services.

Want to go deeper?
If you want a much deeper 46-page workbook for thinking through identity, chosen family, bodily boundaries, privacy & posthumous identity, Fíona & High Noon Hills made one.

identity after death & chosen family: a planning workbook →

AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE

Record washing, dressing, shrouding, cooling, viewing, vigil, ritual, funeral, memorial, embalming, transportation and access wishes here.

ADP: AFTER-DEATH WISHES & BODY CARE →