A year ago, my best friend's husband was killed in a car crash. Because of the circumstances of the accident, the paperwork had to be handled by the state crime lab. She was initially told that it could take 6-12 months to get the death certificate. So while he had plenty of life insurance, she couldn't get it in time to pay for the funeral. An uncle offered to pay, but wanted $1000 a month repayments to start immediately which she couldn't swing as a suddenly single mother of two kids who just lost more than half of the household income. She considered GFM, but found that her husband's ex had already set one up to raise money for "the family" (to be fair, she was still close to his family even though BF and him had been married for 7 years at this point). All our friends had already donated to this fund, which she never saw a penny from and she didn't want to hit them up again.