Death Care Compliance Law

• The Plight of Cemetery Care Funds: State Associations
  While most state funeral director associations sponsor a master preneed trust for their members, we cannot find a single state cemetery association that sponsors a master care fund trust for its members.    With attendance at cemetery association conventions declining, we are seeing a trend where multiple state associations are banding to create larger regional associations. ... […]
  Bill Stalter
• The Plight of Cemetery Care Funds: Is the Fiduciary to Blame?
  Cemetery owners have two choices for their care fund trust: the local bank or the national bank that solicits death care trusts.  When the local bank is used, the care fund is typically administered like an estate planning trust.  The bank’s compliance office may be unfamiliar with the applicable state cemetery law and its restrictions... […]
  Bill Stalter
• The Plight of Cemetery Care Funds: Who’s to Blame?
  The care fund trust is a source of frustration for most cemetery operators.  Rather than offsetting maintenance expenses, the care fund is a state-mandated money pit.  A percentage of grave sales must be deposited to trust with little or no income being paid back to the cemetery by the trustee.  For the average-sized care fund,... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Cemeteries and the Rosebrough Monument Rules: Reviving an old Restraint of Trade Trick
  Sources from several states recently contacted this office about a new policy implemented by a national cemetery corporation.  That cemetery corporation began requiring a “Memorial Survey, Layout, Inspection, and Assessment Fee” for monuments that are to be purchased from third party monument companies.  The cemetery corporation advised that they were blending the administrative, staffing, and... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Defining the Right of Sepulcher with a POA: An Express Power that Can Not be Implied
  A Missouri funeral director recently called for advice.  He received a first call for an individual that died without a spouse or children.  The deceased had a surviving parent and several siblings, but a distant relative was asserting the right of sepulcher by virtue of a durable power of attorney.  The funeral director had reviewed... […]
  Bill Stalter
• NFDA Consumer Survey: An Uptick in Facebook Traffic and Consumer Planning
  The Memorial Business Journal (the NFDA’s weekly newsletter) has been drilling down into the NFDA’s 2024 Consumer Awareness and Preferences Survey.  With the FTC’s Funeral Rule amendment looming, the July 4th MBJ edition was of particular interest to us.  The Survey found that 92% of the survey respondents use Facebook, with most of those respondents... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Confusion over Who Controls the Funeral: Stale Advice
  We recently found this post on funeral matters explaining the authorities of executors, guardians and power of attorney agents to control funeral arrangements.  The post is limiting its advice to New Jersey laws, but a casual reader could lose sight of that limitation.  With regard to executors, the post suggests that an executor will be... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Mom’s Dementia and the empty house: Using the power of attorney to move on
  One of the most difficult challenges for a financial POA agent is the parent’s empty house.  Dementia has robbed the parent of the life skills needed to continue living at home and the health care POA agent has already made the decision to move Mom to an assisted living facility.   As time passes, it becomes... […]
  Bill Stalter
• The Final Chapter of NPS: a Messy Ending
  After almost 16 years, the NPS receivership is coming to a close.  But the final chapter will mark a messy end for funeral homes that have consumers with an orphaned NPS contract and those funeral homes that did not heed the SDR’s 2020 notice about lost earnings.  One of the receivership’s final steps will be... […]
  Bill Stalter
• Avoiding Downgrades: Coupling the Preneed Contract with a Power of Attorney
  The traditional funeral and burial remains the preference of many individuals.  Understanding that this type of arrangement will be more expensive, many of those individuals purchase a preneed contract to spare their survivors a financial burden.  But what happens when a child does not respect their parent’s preference for a traditional funeral and burial?  Upon... […]
  Bill Stalter