One of the problems with obituaries these days is that the place and date of birth make it very easy for criminals to dig up social security numbers and start fraudulent accounts in the name of the deceased. By the time the family gets to probate, etc., a lot of damage can be done. You might want to generalize to help avoid that. Too bad about the genealogy folks, but there is so much information about everyone these days I think it is best to protect yourself.

I wrote the obituary for my father and named the wrong death date on purpose. We know he died on a Tuesday, and the neighbor who found him a week later was sure he'd seen him and they'd spoken in the road outside the house on Friday. But the neighbor had been pushing an IV on a pole for a couple of days as he recovered from a bad infection and I'm convinced he did see dad--in spirit. Since it didn't matter to any of us and though we could document that last time a phone call or Internet connection was made, I wrote it with Tom's date because he was the only one who was going to care about the date.

If you read obituaries from northern parts of the country you'll find they are more forthcoming about the cause of death, and they are more frank about the family relations. I regularly see the remark about the ex-wife in them, though not always.

I used to write obituaries at a local newspaper, and people would call in with long ones written out to be streamlined or edited (I worked with them, I didn't just rewrite) and other times they would just tell me what they wanted and we'd talk and I'd put it together. A lot of them (the poorly written ones, usually) came from the funeral homes.

SRS