Death Care Compliance Law

• Missouri Care Fund Audits: Following the Money
  Our previous post discussed care fund audits and the tracking of a cemetery’s property sales and care fund liability.  The next step of the audit process is following the money to the care fund trust (and the back from the trust to the cemetery).  For these purposes, the Missouri audit notice requests trust statements from... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Missouri Care Fund Audits: Tracking IR Sales and Trust Deposits
  Missouri is catching up on its auditing of licensed endowed care funds.  Within the past couple of months, most of our Missouri endowed cemeteries received the attached notice requesting reports and documents for audit.  In prior posts, we have suggested that the Office of Endowed Care Cemeteries (OECC) audit process should be revised.  Our next... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Cemetery Care Master Trusts: A Need for Economies of Scale
  A Google search of “state funeral association master trust” will return hyperlinks to dozens of state funeral director associations.  In the 1970’s, funeral associations began establishing master preneed trusts as an alternative to passbook savings accounts.  As preneed gained acceptance with funeral directors, the associations saw the opportunity to provide administration and create a revenue... […]
  Bill Stalter
• An Update to the Cemetery Unitrust Movement: a few more states but lagging interest on the part of cemeteries
  It has been three years since we last posted about those states that have passed laws allowing cemetery trusts to take a unitrust election.  Since then, Arizona, California and Indiana have joined the list.  The movement towards fixed care fund distributions has not caught on as quickly as some thought when the concept was introduced... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Missouri Cemetery Associations and Preneed: So Many Obstacles
  In contrast to Missouri’s Chapter 214, most states’ cemetery laws do not exempt all cemetery associations from care fund requirements.  We do find that some states exempt small non-profit cemeteries (typically based on acreage).  Some states limit non-profit cemetery exemptions to grandfathered situations (a cemetery established prior to 1940).  These small cemetery associations are more... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Doug’s Final Chapter
  Doug Cassity has apparently died alone last Sunday night.  The St. Louis Dispatch ran a short story on the death of the man responsible for defrauding preneed consumers out of hundreds of millions of dollars.  We wonder whether his NPS preneed contract was an orphan or not. Continue Reading…
  Bill Stalter
• Missouri’s Religious Cemeteries: a Preneed No Man’s Land
  As suggested in our prior Cemetery Preneed Exemption post, Missouri’s endowed care cemetery law (Chapter 214.270 et seq) has a huge flaw when it comes to religious cemeteries: they are either all in or all out.   Religious cemeteries often have good cause for seeking exemption from state endowed care laws.  Our religious cemetery clients typically... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Missouri Exempt Cemeteries: The Exception that is the Rule
  When Missouri’s endowed care law was passed in 1994, all cemeteries were required to register with the Office of Endowed Care Cemeteries.  Cemeteries can seek licensing as either an endowed care cemetery or a non-endowed cemetery, or the cemetery could claim it was exempt from Chapter 214 pursuant to the definition of “Cemetery” pursuant to... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Finally a Missouri Cemetery Preneed Exemption: Sort of.
  The Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors recently promulgated a rule (20 CSR 2120-3.560) to exempt certain cemetery operators from preneed licensing with the State Board.  The rule was a long time coming.  We first wrote about preneed licensing confusion for Missouri cemeteries back in 2009 (Lost in the translation: Missouri’s preneed exemption... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Funeral Planning in the COVID-19 Era: Access to GPLs
  While COVID-19 reminds the most vulnerable of our population of the need for funeral planning, safety concerns may preclude following advice given by both the Death Care industry and the Federal Trade Commission: visit multiple funeral homes and request their general price lists.   The FTC mandated ‘general price list’ provides an itemized description of the... […]
  Bill Stalter