When you are making preparations for the future you would do well to consider factors beyond the transfer of assets to your loved ones after your passing. Part of the goal of estate planning is to make a difficult time as stress-free as possible for your family members, and one of the matters that they would be left to deal with during a time of grieving would be the funeral arrangements.
If you would like to do so, you can actually make your own arrangements in advance, and the first thing to decide is going to be how you want your body handled. Most people are going to choose either burial or cremation, but the fact is that there is another option that exists.
The option that we are referring to is that of being cryonically frozen. The point is to preserve your tissue so that perhaps your dead body could be resuscitated at some point in the future when more advanced technologies exist.
Cryonics has gotten a boost in the news lately when it was reported that Englishman Simon Cowell, a former judge on the popular American Idol television program, is going to have his body cryonically preserved after his death.
The razor-tongued Cowell is quoted in the Daily Mail thusly: “Medical science is bound to work out a way of bringing us back to life in the next century or so, and I want to be available when they do. I would be doing the nation an invaluable service.”
This is an interesting Pandora’s Box on many levels, including that of estate planning. How do you go about planning for a time when you may come back to life hundreds of years after your death?
Perhaps fortunately, only 200 people have had their bodies frozen so it is not a pressing legal challenge at the present time. And if you were to consider it, you have to ask yourself how relevant your world view (or ability to judge talent) will be in the year 2525.
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