Ensuring your identity is true to the end.
Too often, trans and gay lives are erased by next of kin.
We help trans and gay folks take control. As your designated funeral agent or funeral celebrant, we will make sure your identity, relationships, and story are honored exactly as they deserve to be.
Our Approach
We are your advocates, supporting you anywhere in the US or Canada. By combining care and legal authority, we ensure your final tribute reflects authenticity and truth.
We do this in two key ways. ( 1 ) Shaping your unique memorial ceremony and playing a part in it as a funeral celebrant, or ( 2 ) Acting as your legally designated funeral agent to ensure your wishes are respected, even from a distance.
We are not a funeral home.
We do not handle body disposition, cremation, burial, or embalming. Those services are performed by licensed funeral directors. Our role is to coordinate with your funeral director, making sure your identity, relationships, and wishes are honored exactly as you choose.
Make your last moments meaningful.
We begin with a Zoom consultation and will work with you to make sure that your last chapter is actually a part of your story.
We mostly perform as Funeral Celebrants for folks in the Tri-State area around New York, but can easily work as your Designated Funeral Agent from where-ever.
WHAT IS A FUNERAL CELEBRANT?
A funeral celebrant is someone who designs and leads a personalized memorial or funeral ceremony.
Unlike traditional religious officiants, a celebrant works with you to create a service that reflects your life, identity, values, and relationships. This can include writing and delivering the eulogy, incorporating meaningful non-denominational rituals, and ensuring the ceremony honors your unique personality, not someone else’s version of who you were.
At OUTRO, our role as celebrants is to help honor YOUR life. Too often, funerals become a platform for others, whether to preach, reinterpret, or overwrite a life. We make sure that doesn’t happen.
WHAT IS A DESIGNATED FUNERAL AGENT?
Also known as an Agent for Disposition of Remains, a designated funeral agent is a person you legally appoint to carry out your funeral and memorial wishes.
This person has the legal authority to make decisions about your arrangements, including working with the funeral home, determining the details of your services, and ensuring your instructions are followed.
For many trans and gay individuals, this role is essential. Without a designated agent, decision-making typically falls to next of kin, who do not need to respect your identity, relationships, or wishes.
Why appoint a designated funeral agent?
Next of kin control everything by default.
If you do not appoint an agent, the law determines who makes decisions, often based on family hierarchy, not your actual relationships.A Power of Attorney does not apply after death.
Even if you’ve given someone Power of Attorney during your lifetime, that authority ends at death and does not extend to funeral decisions.Your will is will not be read in time.
Funeral and disposition decisions are made immediately after death, before a will can be located, let alone the months long probate process.Your identity and relationships may not be respected.
Without clear legal authority, partners, chosen family, or affirming advocates may be excluded from decision-making.
Appointing a designated funeral agent ensures that someone you trust, not just your legal next of kin, has the authority to carry out your wishes and protect your final story.
Our Services
Every person, and every situation, is different. Our services are tailored to ensure your identity, relationships, and final wishes are protected with clarity and care. Pricing will vary based on the needs of your situation and what you envision.
We coordinate closely with your funeral home to ensure your final chapter is carried out exactly as you envision it. Your identity will be respected, your name honored, and your life presented and remembered alongside the people who truly matter to you.
Personalized ceremony design and officiation. We create and lead a memorial that reflects your life truthfully, without distortion or reinterpretation. We will hold a meeting with your loved ones before or after your passing and write and deliver as single eulogy that captures the whole you.