On September 30, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2542, a California bill that changes who is allowed to decide what happens to a person’s body after they die. If you have never thought about that question, the state has already answered it for you, and the answer is a numbered list in the Health and Safety Code that most families only discover during the one week they can least afford a surprise.
What the new law actually does
AB 2542 was carried by Assemblymember Joe Patterson of Rocklin, and it moved through the legislature without a single no vote: 74 to 0 in the Assembly, 38 to 0 in the Senate. The bill names itself Marissa’s Law, after a case in Patterson’s district where a woman and her son were killed in 2025 and the boy’s biological father, who had a domestic violence restraining order against him and no real relationship with his son, held the legal right to control the child’s funeral.
California law already skipped over one category of person, someone charged with murder or manslaughter in connection with the death. AB 2542 adds more. According to the Senate Judiciary Committee’s analysis of the bill, the right of control now passes down the line when the person at the top had an active domestic violence restraining order against the decedent, or when court orders, a will, or other documents show that giving them control would run against what the decedent actually wanted. In those cases the decision moves to the next person in line.
It is a narrow fix for a specific kind of harm, and it is a good one. But the part worth your attention is a phrase sitting quietly in the committee’s description of existing law.
The ladder most families have never seen
Here is how California decides when no written instructions exist. Control of disposition goes first to the agent named in a power of attorney for health care. If there is none, it goes to the surviving spouse, then to the adult children, deciding by majority if there is more than one, then to the parents, then to the adult siblings, again by majority. After that it moves outward through degrees of kinship, and finally to a conservator or the public administrator.
Read that list again and notice how much it assumes. It assumes the spouse is the closest person. It assumes adult children can agree. It assumes the parents are in the picture. It assumes that ‘majority’ is something a grieving family can produce in two days while a funeral home waits on a decision about cremation.
Most states have some version of this ladder, and the order is not identical everywhere. What is nearly universal is that it is a fallback. It exists because the person who died did not say.
The person at the top may not be the person you would choose
I think about this more than is probably normal, because I built a company around the gap between what people intend and what their families can actually find. The ladder is where that gap gets expensive.
Consider how it goes sideways without anyone acting in bad faith. A couple separated for nine years but never divorced, where the spouse still outranks the children. Three adult siblings, one of whom stopped speaking to the family years ago, who now each hold a vote. A partner of fourteen years who was never married and does not appear on the list at all. A stepparent who raised you and a biological parent who did not, where the statute sees only one of them.
None of those people are villains. They are just the names the statute reached first.
The sentence that outranks the ladder
The ladder applies when no written instructions exist. That is the whole hinge, and it is the reason this story matters outside California.
In California and in most states, a person can leave written directions about the disposition of their remains and can name who is authorized to carry them out. The mechanics vary. Some states use a dedicated disposition directive, some fold the authority into a health care power of attorney, some have specific signing or witnessing requirements. This is exactly the kind of detail worth twenty minutes with an estate attorney licensed where you live, because the form that holds up in Illinois is not necessarily the form that holds up in Texas.
What does not vary is the effect. A clear written instruction moves the decision from ‘who does the statute reach first’ to ‘what did this person want.’ It also does something no law can measure, which is take the weight off whoever ends up holding the phone.
What to write down, and where to put it
Keep it concrete and keep it short. Burial or cremation, and if cremation, what should happen to the ashes. The funeral home or cemetery if you have a preference, and whether anything has already been prepaid. Whether you want a service at all, and roughly what kind. Who you want making the calls, with a second name in case the first person is unreachable or too wrecked to do it. Anything you specifically do not want.
Then, and this is the part almost everyone skips, make sure the document is findable by the person who needs it at two in the morning. A signed directive sealed in a safe deposit box that nobody can open until probate opens is a document that failed. Tell the person you named that you named them, and tell them where the paper lives.
If you have a family member whose involvement would make things harder rather than easier, that is worth writing down too, and worth raising with an attorney rather than leaving to the ladder. AB 2542 closed one version of that problem in one state. A written instruction closes it everywhere, before anyone has to argue.
The quiet version of this conversation
Nobody wants to open this topic at Thanksgiving. The good news is that it does not take a long conversation, just a specific one. Not ‘what are your wishes,’ which invites a shrug, but ‘if something happened tomorrow, who should the funeral home call, and do they know that.’ Most people can answer that in a sentence. The problem is that almost nobody has ever been asked.
A law can keep the wrong person from deciding. Only you can say who the right one is.
In BestFarewell, the Wishes and Final Details pillars of Cornerstone exist for this exact page of the plan: the decision, the person who carries it out, and a backup, recorded once in plain language. Roundtable is what makes sure the people you named can actually reach it, without anyone hunting through a drawer for a folder at two in the morning.