You're about to step into waist-high merde.

My interpretation: True believers at the LDS church believe their ancestors, having gotten to heaven, will want to be LDS. Therefore they can have their ancestors baptised and consequentlybe "saved." Once baptised, they can have their ancestors' marriages "sancitfied," which yields something else.

I should put a codicil on my will that I never want to be posthumously baptised into the LDS church (of any flavor). Perhaps by that time I'll have an estate worth withholding.

Note: This brief report comes from my having been told about this several times, always in increasing doubt.

Much as patsmor said, the whole posthumous Mormon baptism thing is actually pretty common, and I'm told it's one of the main reasons Mormons are heavily into genealogy. A posthumous baptism nonetheless serves to get people into heaven, and why wouldn't people want to be in heaven, right? There is or was also some fairly bizarre stuff about how unmarried women don't get into heaven, which is why for a while in the nineteenth century, at least, women were being posthumously married to members of the Mormon church, which figured heavily in anti-Mormon propaganda of the time (now available online!). I don't know if that last is still current, though; Mormon doctrine changes over time (I could phrase that less politely, but won't). I don't think black skin is the mark of Cain any longer, for example.

Anyway, the thing with the posthumous baptism is that after a while some churches started to expand their baptism pool. There was a big scandal about ten years ago when some dinky little church somewhere decided to start baptizing (Jewish) Holocaust victims. They got through quite a few before someone else found out about and raised a stink. There was a huge outcry and the official Mormon church leadership disciplined them. I don't know if the baptisms were invalidated, though.

*points up* They have it right. The Mormon church is heavily into genealogy and probably has the best libraries dedicated to that sort of research in the U.S., and while the good news is it's free to do research there, the bad news is that if you do locate your family in their records, they will have been baptized into the church with or without your liking it.

(Which is why you should never actually submit additional names to the church for inclusion in their records; those names will end up being baptized, as well.)

I prefer to go with the theory that there isn't a heck of a lot one can do about it, and that those who have been posthumously baptized and taken to Mormon heaven will kick the butts of those who put them there upon their arrival.