Condolences and the food expenses people incur for them

Question:
Honorable Shaykh, there has been a lot of talk about what happens after a man dies, such as setting up a place for condolences and the food gatherings and other things that come with it. We ask for your guidance. May Allah reward you with good.

Answer:
Consoling the bereaved is prescribed. It is a means of comforting him and lightening the burden of his loss. This is prescribed.
But the expenses people have attached to these condolences are burdens and shackles. This is a practice of the people, not something prescribed. Consoling is prescribed, and it is much easier than these things. You console someone if you meet him in the mosque, you console him in the cemetery if you participated in burying the deceased, you console his relative, you console him if you meet him in the street, or in the mosque, or in his shop, or in his office or workplace, without being tied to a specific time or place, without slaughtering animals or preparing food, and so on. This is something the people have innovated.
They have expanded on it, and it involves heavy expenses for people, a waste of time, and it burdens people with traveling and covering long distances. There is no need for this competition. You have the phone now; he is sitting next to you. Take the phone, call him, and offer your condolences for his loss. Say, "May Allah make your consolation good, may Allah strengthen you in your affliction, and may Allah forgive your deceased." And you are in your place. Or write him a letter, or send a message via fax. The matters are very easy; they do not require these things that have burdened people. And if some of the rich can afford it, many of the poor cannot afford these things, but they bear them. And these things may be held from the deceased's estate, and his heirs do not hear about it, or he has minor children, or their money and inheritance is entrusted to someone without a legitimate legal basis. So these things and these arrangements and these customs that people have established and adopted, thinking they are obligatory and part of the condolences, and that leaving them is a shortcoming—this is not the case.