When you visit a funeral home in Bronx, NY to make funeral arrangements for a loved one who recently passed away, you’ll need to make sure that you have a few key documents handy. It’ll be difficult for a funeral home to assist you if you can’t provide them with these documents. You might also inadvertently slow up the funeral planning process by forgetting these documents at home. Here are some of the documents that you’ll want to make sure you have in your possession the first time you take a trip to a funeral home.

Birth certificate

The very first thing that you should grab when you’re getting ready to head to a funeral home to plan a loved one’s Bronx, NY funeral services is your loved one’s birth certificate. This will provide a funeral home with your loved one’s full name as well as their date of birth, their hometown, and more. It’ll also provide them with your loved one’s parents’ names. It should give them almost everything they’ll need to get the ball rolling on your loved one’s funeral arrangements.

Marriage certificate

If your loved one was married, they should have a marriage certificate that was given to them right after their wedding. This is another thing that you’re going to want to bring along to a funeral home. It’s very easy to overlook this particular document when you’re in a hurry to head down to a funeral home. So you should make sure that it’s accounted for prior to starting the funeral planning process.

Military discharge papers

Did your loved one serve in the military at some point in their lives? If they did, then they should have military discharge papers lying around somewhere in their house. These documents are going to be extremely important when you’re planning a funeral for a veteran. Families should try to get some sense of where these papers are long before a loved one passes away.

Funeral pre-planning documents

Did your loved one take the time to pre-plan their own funeral arrangements? If so, this is going to make it very easy for your family to put the finishing touches on their funeral services. There won’t be a whole lot that you’ll need to do. But you will need to make sure that you can find the funeral pre-planning documents that they received when they went through advance planning.

Photo

You might be able to get away with not providing a funeral home with a photo of your loved one right away. You can usually bring a photo on your second or third trip to a funeral plan while making funeral plans. But you should avoid waiting until the last minute to do it if you can. A funeral home is going to need a photo of your loved one for their obituary and for the display that they’ll create for your loved one’s funeral services. It’s why you should try to get a photo of your loved one into their hands ASAP.

Do you have questions about which documents you’ll need to plan a loved one’s funeral? Riverdale-on-Hudson Funeral Home, Inc. can answer them for you when you make Bronx, NY funeral arrangements for a loved one through us. Reach out to us for all your burial and cremation needs.