How Do You Write an Obituary for Someone You Had a Difficult Relationship With?

Detailed Explanation

Most obituary guidance assumes the family loved the person without complication. It rarely says what to do when that isn't true: when the person to be written about caused real harm, was absent for large stretches of a family's life, or is remembered by the people writing the notice with more relief, anger, or ambivalence than grief. That situation is more common than obituary pages usually acknowledge, and it deserves a straight answer rather than being quietly skipped. See how to write an obituary for the general structure and tone this page builds on; this page covers only the specific problem of writing about someone with a difficult or estranged relationship to the family.

This is a different task from writing a eulogy for a difficult or estranged relationship. A eulogy is spoken once, to a room of people who mostly already know the family's history and came specifically to grieve together. An obituary is published, permanent, and read by a much wider and more anonymous audience: old colleagues, distant relatives, a search engine, anyone who knew the deceased and nobody who knew the family's private reality. That difference changes what's appropriate to say.

What an obituary is actually for, in this situation

An obituary's usual job of helping a reader understand who someone was still applies, but it doesn't require the writer to endorse or celebrate a relationship that wasn't good. It can be entirely honest. It can avoid making false claims of closeness or admiration nobody in the family felt. And it can still be a brief, dignified public record rather than an outlet for grievance.

The workable middle ground is writing to what's verifiably true and neutral: where the person was born, their work, the fact of a marriage or children, who is publicly acknowledged as surviving them, rather than an assessment of their character. A factual obituary is a complete, legitimate choice, not a lesser or evasive one.

How much to acknowledge, and how

If the family wants to acknowledge that the relationship was difficult at all (most choose not to, in a public notice), keep it to a phrase, not a paragraph, and keep it about the family's own experience rather than an accusation:

• A brief, undramatic phrase ("he is remembered by his children with complicated feelings" or similar) says enough without detail a stranger has no context for.
• Avoid naming specific incidents, accusations, or blame in the obituary itself. A public notice isn't the place to disclose what happened; it can't be edited once it's read, and it will be read by people who had no part in it, including people who may have had a warmer relationship with the deceased and find a public airing distressing regardless of whether it's accurate.
• It's completely acceptable to say nothing about the relationship's quality at all and let the factual details speak for themselves. Silence isn't dishonest.

When family members disagree about the tone

This is one of the most common practical problems with this kind of obituary: one sibling wants warmth, another wants honesty, a third wants to say as little as possible. A few approaches that work in practice:

• Write the published version to the most factual, lowest-common-denominator content everyone can tolerate seeing in print, and let anyone who wants to say more do it elsewhere: a eulogy only they deliver, a private letter, or a shared online memorial where different family members can each add their own reflections without needing to agree on a single public version.
• Decide who has the final edit, ideally the closest surviving relative or whoever is organising the funeral, before drafting begins, so the disagreement doesn't play out in the final hours before a deadline.
• Remember the funeral notice and the obituary don't have to match in tone. A short, purely practical funeral notice can run to meet the service deadline while the fuller obituary, which has no deadline, is worked through more carefully afterward, or skipped altogether if the family decides a longer piece isn't wanted.

A shorter notice is a legitimate alternative

Nobody is required to write a full 200-to-800-word life story. If the relationship makes a fuller obituary genuinely difficult to write honestly and kindly at the same time, a brief, practical funeral or death notice, with just a name, dates, and service details, is a complete, respectful option on its own. Choosing the shorter form isn't a lesser choice; it's simply choosing not to write the longer one.

Things to Consider

• You're not obligated to write anything you don't believe. Praise that isn't true reads as false to anyone who knew the person well, and it can feel like a betrayal of the family's real experience to the people writing it.
• Consider who else will read it before you decide on tone. A public obituary is sometimes the first thing an estranged relative, a former colleague, or someone else affected by the person's life encounters. The wider the likely readership, the more a neutral, factual approach tends to serve everyone.
• Grief and relief can coexist, and neither cancels the other out. Feeling both about the same death is common after a difficult relationship, and it doesn't need to be resolved before the obituary can be written.
• A private outlet exists for the fuller story. If there's more the family wants to say than the obituary can safely hold, an online memorial or a private conversation is often the better place for it than a public notice.

Common Mistakes

• Writing warmth that isn't there to "keep the peace." A dishonest-feeling obituary rarely satisfies the family member who wanted honesty, and it doesn't undo the difficulty it's papering over.
• Using the obituary to air a grievance or name specific harm. This is the one direction almost universally regretted afterward; a public notice is a poor venue for disclosure, and it can't be un-published.
• Letting one family member's version stand in for everyone's without agreement. Especially where people had genuinely different relationships with the deceased, one person drafting alone and publishing without checking can cause lasting hurt.
• Assuming a short, plain notice needs justifying. It doesn't. A brief, factual notice is a normal and sufficient choice in this situation, not a sign the family is hiding something or failing some obligation.

If working through what to write brings up grief that feels bigger than the obituary itself, Grief Australia and GriefLine both support exactly this kind of complicated, mixed grief, not only straightforward loss.