A client gets a call. His mother, who lived alone in her Manhattan apartment, has passed away unexpectedly. He is the nominated executor in her will and needs to fly in from Chicago immediately—not just to grieve, but to begin the immense task of stewardship. He has to arrange the funeral, secure her property, and locate her documents. His first thought is to book a flight. His second is to ask the airline for a bereavement fare. The agent’s response is polite, but firm: that program no longer exists.
This scenario plays out every day. The belief in compassionate, last-minute airfare is a holdover from a different era. For grieving families, the reality can be a shock, adding a significant financial strain to an already overwhelming emotional burden. As an estate planning attorney, I see the downstream effects. The first 72 hours after a death are critical, and logistical hurdles like travel costs are often the first test of an estate plan’s resilience.
The Reality of Airline Policies
For decades, major airlines offered bereavement fares. They were typically a small percentage off the full, unrestricted economy fare—which was often the only type of ticket available for last-minute travel. But the industry has changed. With the rise of online booking and dynamic pricing, the system that supported these fares has been dismantled.
Today, almost all major U.S. carriers—including Delta, American Airlines, and United—have discontinued their formal bereavement fare programs. Some may offer flexibility, such as waiving change fees on an existing ticket, but they do not offer a point-of-sale discount for a new booking. The expectation is that travelers will find a more competitive price online than the airline could offer through a legacy bereavement policy.
A few international carriers and smaller domestic airlines may still have policies on the books, but they are the exception. Even then, the process is cumbersome, requiring proof of death and a direct call to the airline while you are trying to manage a family crisis. The hard truth is this: families should not count on airlines to ease the financial cost of emergency travel.
The Executor’s Immediate Burden
When my client from Chicago lands at LaGuardia, his duties as executor begin. He may believe he can use his mother’s estate to pay for his flight, the funeral director, and other immediate costs. He is correct—eventually. Under New York law, specifically Estates, Powers and Trusts Law (EPTL) § 11-1.1, an executor is permitted to use estate assets to pay for reasonable funeral and administration expenses. The problem is timing.
Before an executor can access a single dollar from the decedent’s bank accounts, the will must be admitted to probate by the Surrogate’s Court. The court must formally grant the executor authority by issuing Letters Testamentary. This process is not immediate. It takes weeks, often months, for the court to act. In the meantime, the financial obligations are immediate.
The funeral home requires payment. The airline ticket has been charged to a personal credit card. The locks on the apartment need to be changed. These are out-of-pocket expenses that the executor must bear, hoping for reimbursement from the estate down the road. This is a significant fiduciary and personal financial risk, and it is a burden no one should have to carry while grieving.
Stewardship Through Intentional Planning
This is where intentional, deliberate planning demonstrates its true value. The goal is not just to decide who gets what, but to ensure the people you leave behind face as few obstacles as possible. The primary tool we use to address the problem of immediate liquidity is a revocable living trust.
Unlike a will, which is subject to the delays of probate, a trust is a private instrument. Upon the grantor’s death, the named successor trustee can access the trust’s assets almost immediately. There is no court proceeding required to grant them this authority. The trust document itself is their grant of power.
With a funded trust, the successor trustee—often the same person named as executor—has the necessary cash on hand. They can book flights for family members to attend the service. They can pay the funeral director and the airline, all using trust funds as intended. This removes the personal financial burden from the trustee and allows them to focus on their family and their fiduciary duties without the added stress of fronting thousands of dollars.
Stewardship. It is the prudent and thoughtful act of anticipating your family’s needs and putting a structure in place that provides for them when they are most vulnerable.
If you have been named an executor or are creating your own estate plan, the question of immediate liquidity is paramount. We often begin our planning conversations by mapping out the first seven days after a client’s passing to identify and solve for these exact pressure points. To understand how your own plan addresses these immediate needs, I invite you to schedule a review of your existing documents with our firm.
