· This is the 4581 original first article word count 3k+ ·
· Li Yongxin | Article Follow Qin Shuo Moments ID: qspyq2015 ·
A while ago, the 96-year-old Queen of England was absent from the "Platinum Jubilee" celebration due to health reasons , which aroused public doubts. In fact, doubts are unnecessary. It is said that the British royal family had rehearsed the Queen's funeral last year. Britain is a country that attaches great importance to death and funerals, and it was there that the modern living contract was born.
What is an inter vivos contract? A living contract is a contract that stipulates funeral matters after death through an agreement before death. It usually includes a series of services such as hospice care, funeral rites, and tombstone design.
Living contracts in the modern sense originated from British testamentary trusts, often combined with trusts or insurance. They are very mature in British and American countries and have a history of 60 to 70 years.
Living contracts have a high popularity in the United States. 54% of the US$3.2 billion in sales of SCI Group, a listed American funeral company, in 2020 came from living contracts; After World War II, Japan introduced the "living contract" system and quickly promoted it; and it spread After entering Taiwan, it has developed rapidly. Some companies purchase lifetime contracts as rewards for their employees, which shows its popularity.
Wu Zetian ’s Qianling and Life Contract
Chinese people have always attached great importance to funeral culture, and the so-called coffin can only be concluded by covering it. The wealthy and free Yang Kang in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" died without a burial place, which made Yang Kang fans sigh. Chinese people pay less attention to inter vivos contracts, but in fact, inter vivos contracts have a long history in China. The emperors of ancient China can be said to be the group with the most awareness of lifetime contracts. Most of them started building tombs and arranging funeral procedures before they were alive. This can be said to be the prototype of modern lifetime contracts.
The Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin, which is included in the World Cultural Heritage , was built in the first year of the reign of Emperor Qin (247 BC) and completed in the second year of Qin II (208 BC). It lasted 39 years and is the first mausoleum in Chinese history. A large-scale and well-designed imperial mausoleum. Even more legendary than Qin Shihuang’s Mausoleum is the Qianling Mausoleum, the mausoleum of China’s only Empress Wu Zetian.
Qianling Mausoleum is located on Liangshan Mountain, six kilometers north of Qianxian County, Shaanxi Province, and 76 kilometers away from the ancient capital Xi'an. It is majestic and has stood for thousands of years. As far as lifetime contracts are concerned, Wu Zetian's Qianling Mausoleum deserves more focus than Qin Shihuang's Mausoleum. This is because:
First of all, Qianling Mausoleum may be the only emperor's tomb among the Tang Dynasty eighteen emperors' tombs that has not been robbed. Wu Zetian and her Therefore, her husband Li Zhi was able to sleep forever in the mausoleum;
Secondly, the Tang Dynasty Guo Zuo lasted for more than 200 years after Wu Zetian, Tang Xuanzong even created the " Kaiyuan Prosperity ", which is similar to the Qin Dynasty Compared with the death of the second generation, the Tang Dynasty after Wu Zetian was long-lived and prosperous;
Finally, Wu Zetian and Tang Gaozong were loving husband and wife during their lifetimes, and their descendants were prosperous after their death.
In short, Wu Zetian's Qianling Mausoleum is located in a geomantic treasure land. On the one hand, it allowed her life to end magnificently and to rest peacefully underground; on the other hand, it may have provided a shadow for the descendants of the Tang Dynasty to create a prosperous Chinese age. This is exactly in line with the artistic conception of the living contract to praise life and bless future generations.
In ancient times, funeral rites were the focus of lifetime contracts. When Wu Zetian passed away, because she was not only a talented person of the late emperor Li Shimin , but also the queen of Li Zhi, and a generation of empress, it was very difficult for her son Li Xian and the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty to arrange the funeral in what capacity. Fortunately, she had a posthumous edict and requested to be buried with Li Zhi as queen. Her last edict here is the most direct reflection of her lifetime contract, helping her funeral to go smoothly and her life to end perfectly.
Why does the inter vivos contract deserve the attention of Chinese middle-class families?
In 2015, living contracts were introduced into China as a funeral product sold to ordinary people. Domestic living contracts include hospice care, funeral services and other services.
Taikang Group’s funeral business segment has already launched living contract products, and other domestic funeral companies such as Fushouyuan Group have also developed living contract products.To date, Taikang Group’s living contract sales have exceeded RMB 200 million, while Fu Shouyuan Group has sold a total of 6,694 living contracts in the first half of 2021.
Based on the data that SCI Group, a listed funeral company in the United States, accounts for more than 50% of total annual sales, there is still a lot of room for growth in the sales scale of life contracts for Chinese funeral companies.
China's funeral industry is becoming increasingly mature and developed. The development and construction of cemeteries has integrated concepts such as parks and B&Bs. The endless emergence of sky-high price cemeteries also shows the people's concern for funeral products. However, the development of living contracts in our country is relatively slow. This is mainly because although the Chinese value funerals from the perspective of blood culture, they are taboo about death, and they have little understanding of hospice care, funeral rituals, tombstone design, etc.
"Journey to the West" describes people's collective desire for immortality. People arrange contracts that are needed after death during their lifetime, which may be considered an ominous hint about death.
Living contracts deserve the attention of Chinese people, especially middle-class families. The reasons are as follows:
First of all, a living contract can help people customize their own funeral and tombstone design (tombstone and inscription) in advance. This can not only solve the confusion of children and relatives when handling funeral matters, but also help people have the decent or even gorgeous funeral they want.
The Chinese have a culture of rich burials. The rich burial objects in the tombs of ancient emperors and the need to observe mourning for three years after the death of parents are all manifestations of this culture. Nowadays, cremation of corpses and simple funerals are popular - but this cannot annihilate people's desire for grand and gorgeous funerals, it can only change the form.
The funeral of a great man, the national flag is flown at half-mast in mourning, the funeral of ordinary people, suona is used to see off, all of which are respect for life. More importantly, the living contract provides not only funeral services, but also customizable tombstones and inscriptions on the tombstones in advance. Wu Zetian's wordless monument stands quietly in the hinterland of Liangshan, having gone through thousands of years of wind and rain. The wordless monument reflects the open-mindedness and foresight of a generation of empresses. She left her life's merits and demerits to future generations for comment.
87 version of "Journey to the West" director Ms. Yang Jie's tombstone lies in the Jiugongshan Great Wall Memorial Forest in Beijing. The inscription on the tombstone "just to leave a faint trace in the long river of time" attracted many descendants to stop and pay homage to her "dare to ask where the road is, the road is under her feet" when she overcame all difficulties to film "Journey to the West" Fighting spirit.
The funeral is gorgeous and the tombstone is silent, but they all provide footnotes for our descendants to pay tribute and remember.
Secondly, in the context of childlessness and low birthrate, the widowed and lonely elderly people have no children to support them until they die. After an elderly person passes away at home, the smell of putrid corpses permeates the neighborhood, and the neighborhood committee or street finally handles the funeral arrangements. Such news has been heard from time to time. However, there are also legal risks for the neighborhood committee or the street to handle the funeral matters of the elderly. If the elderly have children living abroad and the children or other relatives do not approve, the neighborhood committee or the street may face legal disputes.
It is the temperature of socialism for the elderly to "have support when they are alive and have a burial when they die". Therefore, to a certain extent, relevant departments encourage people to purchase lifetime contracts and arrange their posthumous affairs in advance.
Finally, the price of cemeteries is rising year by year, driving the prices of funeral products and services related to cemeteries to also rise year by year. At present, the average price of cemeteries in core cities is as high as 100,000 to 200,000 yuan per square meter, and the increase is far greater than housing prices. Some cemetery projects even increase by 30% every year. The famous Hong Kong actor Ng Mang-tat, who passed away in 2021, had no choice but to be buried in Malaysia because there was no cemetery to buy in Hong Kong. This shows how tight the cemetery is.
Correspondingly, the prices of living contract products supporting cemeteries are also rising, because the prices of tombstones, hospice care, funeral services, etc. are all rising. In order to lock in the price of funeral products and services such as funeral services in advance, middle-class families with potential long-term needs will turn to inter vivos contracts.
In short, whether it is to arrange a gorgeous funeral or even a satisfactory inscription for relatives (themselves) in advance; or for widowers and lonely people to arrange their posthumous affairs in advance, or to lock in the price of an inter vivos contract in advance, in the end, many people unanimously choose to make inter vivos contracts.
Of course, in daily life, most children born in the 1970s and 1980s purchase lifetime contracts for their parents in advance, partly out of filial piety. On the other hand, it may be to choose a cemetery with convenient transportation and beautiful scenery, so that family members can gather together to pay homage to their ancestors in the future.
You also need to pay attention to legal risks when purchasing a living contract
As my country's aging population enters the fast lane, the growth rate of domestic deaths is expected to increase from 2020 to 2025, with the five-year cumulative month-on-month growth rate increasing from 5% to 12%. Data released by the China Funeral Industry Association as early as 2014 showed that China’s funeral industry consumption will increase from 200 billion yuan in 2014 to one trillion yuan in 2023, which means that the sales volume of pre-mortem contracts will inevitably increase accordingly. But when purchasing a living contract, we also need to pay attention to potential legal risks.
First of all, when we purchase a living contract, we need to pay attention to the compliance operations of the funeral enterprise. For example, it is very important whether the funds we invest are in trust, whether the funeral company has a professional team to provide hospice care or funeral services, and whether the funeral company reserves or develops enough cemeteries, etc.
Non-compliance in operation, such as incomplete commercial cemetery licenses, lack of supporting funeral services or catering and accommodation facilities, may lead to the loss of rights and services corresponding to the lifetime contract.
Secondly, the legal structure of an inter vivos contract includes three parties: the principal, the undertaker and the user. The principal and the undertaker can be the same person; and the principal and the user can also be the same person. When the inter vivos contract needs to be implemented, the user has passed away. What if the undertaker also dies in advance? Will this result in a situation where no one notifies the cemetery operating company, resulting in the cemetery operating company being unable to provide cemetery and funeral services? Of course, the above problems can be properly solved through professional legal support.
The COVID-19 epidemic has been raging for three years and it is not over yet. Each of us is deeply aware of the fragility and preciousness of life. While alive, we must experience the joy and sweetness of life in a timely manner. If life will eventually come to an end, everyone deserves a "living contract" to make life end beautifully. The author of
is a lawyer.
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