If there's nobody to arrange it

Every state has some arrangement for a person who dies with no money and nobody able to pay. You will not be left. But what happens, how fast, and whether somebody has to ask for it differs so much between states that there is no national answer.

In New South Wales, the local public health unit can authorise a contracted funeral company directly — a casket, a hearse, the grave opened and closed, and a certified record of the grave number. A burial is in an unmarked common grave, shared and numbered but not marked. Ashes from a cremation are stored, so they can be claimed later if anyone ever comes.

In Queensland, somebody has to apply, through a court, and the decision can take weeks.

In Victoria there is no state process of this shape at all, and it runs through a not-for-profit funeral service instead.

So the honest version: something will happen. It may take two months. It will be decided by people who never met you, working from whatever paperwork exists.

Appoint an executor.

An executor does not have to be family. A friend, a neighbour, a solicitor, your state's public trustee — any of them can do it, and the public trustee will do it for people who have nobody else, which is part of why the office exists.

Naming somebody in a will is the difference between your wishes being carried out and a stranger making every decision on the state's schedule. There's a guide on choosing one, and the questions in it apply the same way.

Without family, nobody carries your history around in their head. Everything has to be written.

• Your funeral wishes. Burial or cremation, service or none, music, who should be told. Not in the will — wills often aren't read until afterwards. Keep it with the documents record.
• Who to notify. Names and numbers of the people who would want to know, including the ones nobody else would think of — an old friend interstate, a neighbour, a group you belong to.
• Your pets, and who has agreed.
• Where everything is. There's a printable for that, and if you have no family it matters more, not less.

If you want a particular kind of funeral and there's nobody who'll know to ask for it, paying in advance is one way to make the decision yours rather than a contractor's. There's a guide on how those products work and what to ask.

People who are on their own often assume this means they can't plan, or that it doesn't matter what they want because nobody's left to mind.

The opposite is true. Someone with a large family can afford to leave things vague, because someone will step in and argue about it. You can't. Which makes an afternoon with a will, an executor and a sheet of paper worth more in your hands than in almost anyone else's.