Woman abandoned mother’s body to avoid funeral expenses

She is reportedly a 30-year-old accountant.

She put her aging mother in a nursing home and for more than a decade, she pretended to be her mother’s friend or neighbour.

Then, when her mother died, she “went into hiding” and did not claim her mother’s body to avoid making funeral arrangements, which would have cost her about $2,000.

That was what a funeral service provider told Shin Min Daily News when he came across this sad case of an old woman past 70 years old who seemingly spent her last days alone.

The funeral director, who did not want to be named, found out some details after he volunteered to handle the funeral arrangement for free.

He said the daughter checked the mother into a nursing home and told staff members there that she was a “relative”, and that her mother had no children.

Thereafter, she visited her mother occasionally and during each visit, she would pretend she was her mother’s friend or neighbour.

The funeral director said that he found it quite an outrage that the daughter, who was well-educated and successful, would be this cruel towards her mother. He added that the daughter avoided paying the bills at the nursing home by not admitting that the woman was her mother. And even after the old woman has died, the daughter continued not to acknowledge her.

He observed that for families with more than one child, one of the children may not want to take on the responsibility of caring for the parents alone. And the siblings may try to push the care of their parents around.

What he cannot understand was that while there are Singaporeans who do not want to pay for their parents’ funerals, there are quite a number of them who are willing to splurge on dead pets.

A check with a few pet cremation service providers showed that the cost of cremation of a large pet may be as high as S$750, while that for a small animal may reach up to S$280. One of the providers revealed that some pet owners even spend money to hire monks to chant for their dead pets.

As for the old woman abandoned by her daughter, there is no such attention - she would be sent off by a stranger instead.

Source: Insing

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