In Lieu of Flowers

Often I have clients who want to have family members, upon his or her death, select a charity for donation. While this is difficult to capture in a will, a simple solution I offer to clients is to have the family select a charity "in lieu of flowers". And, if you have one or two in mind, you could share that with your family, but always reserve the right to change your mind. Sadly, this is an important thing to think about in advance, as I learned with the death of my father last fall.

We covered lots of decisions, but we failed to give consideration to selecting a charity to receive donations in lieu of flowers. Only after the obituary ran did I think, oh, we should have named the Dane County Humane Society. We did donate monies received to the organization, but I wish we would have thought of this earlier.