A client asked me recently if they were legally required to write an obituary for their mother.
Short answer: No.
Longer answer: also no, but let me tell you why it’s worth thinking about.
Obituaries used to serve a real purpose. Before smartphones and group texts and Facebook posts that travel faster than a phone tree ever could, the newspaper obit was how people found out someone died — and where and when to show up. It was functional. It made sense.
That’s… not really the world we live in anymore.
Today you can post a photo, send a mass text, or set up a memorial page online and reach every person your loved one ever knew before the ink would even dry on a newspaper listing. The logistics of “spreading the word” have changed completely. The obituary just hasn’t caught up.
And yet families still feel like they have to do one. Like skipping it would be disrespectful, or that someone in the family will notice and have feelings about it. I get it.
But here are a few things I want you to know before you reflexively say yes to the funeral home’s obituary package:
They’re expensive. Newspaper obituaries are priced by the word or by the inch, depending on the publication. What feels like a loving tribute can easily cost several hundred dollars — sometimes more — for a few paragraphs. That money adds up fast when you’re already writing checks for everything else.
They’re also not foolproof proof of anything. After my uncle died, the estate attorney asked me to track down my father’s obituary from 25 years earlier to establish lineage during a family dispute. I found it. I submitted it. Here’s the thing about that: you can put whatever you want in an obituary. There’s no fact-checking department. No official verification process. It’s a published statement, not a legal document. The attorney needed it, and I understand why — but it’s a flimsy piece of evidence when you think about how unregulated it actually is.
Here’s the part that’s genuinely a little sinister. Obituaries are a goldmine for scammers. Think about what’s typically in one: full name, maiden name, hometown, surviving family members’ names, where they went to school, where they worked, what organizations they belonged to. That’s basically a security question cheat sheet.
The FBI has specifically warned about this. The more personal facts you include in an obituary — or post online — the greater the risk of scams for both the deceased and the survivors. They recommend leaving out the birthdate, middle name, home address, birthplace, and mother’s maiden name. And here’s the one that surprises people: they also suggest not listing the names of surviving family members, because it can open those people up to targeting.
And it’s not just old-school fraud. Scammers now use AI tools to extract personal details from obituaries and build hyper-personalized scams targeting grieving relatives — and the elderly are especially vulnerable. There’s even a newer twist on obituary scams: if an obituary lists the date and time of the funeral service, burglars can break into the presumably empty house while the family is at the service.
I didn’t make up any of that. I wish I could say I did.
So what are your options?
If the goal is to honor your loved one and let people know they’re gone, you have choices that don’t cost a fortune or hand a stranger the keys to your family’s identity.
- Ever Loved – A free memorial and obituary platform where you can share a tribute, collect memories, and organize funeral logistics all in one place.
- Epilogg – Another online memorial option that lets you tell your loved one’s story without the price tag of print.
Both are free (or low-cost) and let you control who sees what.
If you do decide to publish a traditional obituary: Keep the personal details light. Use first names only for surviving family members. Skip the maiden names, the full birthdate, the specific organizations, the military unit numbers. You can still tell a beautiful story without handing over an identity theft starter kit.
If you do choose to write an obituary, the goal is to honor a life — not to prove one existed on a public ledger.
You have options. Use them.
