Abandonment by the natal family is a common experience among numerous trans women in Turkey. This abandonment shows itself not only when trans people are alive, but also when they die. Disavowal of a deceased trans body and refusal to organize funerals or practice rituals of death are prevalent among the biological family members of trans people. There are, for example, stories about some biological families who claimed the property of their trans children, while denying them funeral rights, or those, who insisted on their trans child’s burial among anonymous people. In such occurrences, trans friends often take the initiative, re-claim the body and organize the funeral, replacing the functional and emotional role of the family and announcing themselves as the “real” family. However, this situation, at the same time, puts them in contestation with state regulations that legally ascribe the right of inheritance, as well as the right to the deceased body to the natal family members of the deceased. Hence, the state functions as the mediator and authorizer of particular forms of intimacies between trans people, their natal families and other social actors. During my fieldwork among trans people in Istanbul in 2009-10, the issue of death was a sore spot that not only trans people but also people from queer circles have loudly spoken about, regarding their relations with their biological families. In such stories, either trans or other openly queer people have instructed each other of their desire to be buried by their queer, or in another term that use, by their “real” families. In this paper, by drawing on ethnographic data collected from a trans woman’s, Sibel’s, death and funeral, I will discuss how trans people re-work and re-make the concept of family in their struggle and/or resilience against everyday familial violence of abandonment and disowning, and state governed familial intimacy. I will explore trans women’s practices and accounts of characterizing their trans friendships as their “real family,” and complicate their investments in this “real” family as an intimate survival strategy to cope with everyday violence.