February 10, 2010

Removing Barriers to Home Funerals in Minnesota

Minnesota is the only state in the U.S. that requires embalming for home vigils and visitations, but the Minnesota Threshold Network is working to change that and to remove other restrictions that impede the right of Minnesotans to care for their own dead until burial or cremation. If you live in Minnesota, you can help by contacting your legislator after reading about the issue on our website's Minnesota page.

February 2, 2010

Undertaken With Love Now on Facebook!

The Undertaken With Love project now has its own page on Facebook. Come visit, become a fan, and then start posting your comments, links, photos and other items related to the home funeral movement!

While you're at it, please note that the URL for the main Undertaken With Love site is no longer www.homefuneralmanual.org. That URL will expire in a couple of weeks and stop rolling over to the new URL, which is now www.undertakenwithlove.org

Holly Stevens

November 27, 2009

FTC staff opinion: Funeral providers may discount basic services fee in cases of home funerals

According to the Funeral Rule of the Federal Trade Commission, a funeral provider may charge a "basic services fee" to recover overhead and staff service costs involved in "arranging any funeral." This fee typically covers such expenses as the arrangement conference, the securing of the death certificate and building expenditures. If the fee is non-declinable -- as is almost always the case -- the provider must disclose either that the fee will be added to the cost of funeral goods and services selected (most common practice) or that it is included in the price of the provider's caskets (rarely practiced).

Home funerals in which the family opts to use only a few specific services of a commercial provider typically break the norm, because in those cases, the family is serving in effect as the funeral director, handling most of the tasks normally bundled into the basic services fee. It seems reasonable, then, that funeral homes should be free to charge less than their customary basic services fee to such families, but the Federal Trade Commission never had addressed that particular issue. As a matter of fact, most funeral homes do already discount the basic services fee for four required basic services -- forwarding remains, receiving remains, direct cremation and immediate burial -- although past language from the Federal Trade Commission had not clearly indicated whether this is an acceptable practice.

Some months ago, I wrote Craig Tregillus, who oversees enforcement of the Funeral Rule for the Federal Trade Commission, to obtain a staff opinion on whether funeral providers may discount their basic services fee in the case of home funerals that make use of only a few commercial funeral goods or services. About the same time, Lisa Carlson of Funeral Ethics Organization wrote him, questioning whether the Rule allows a reduced fee in the case of forwarding remains, receiving remains, immediate burials and direct cremations. Also, Ohio attorney T. Scott Gilligan, representing the National Funeral Directors Association, wrote Tregillus arguing that the Rule has always permitted a reduced fee for certain services.

In a response dated November 24, 2009, Tregillus' staff concurs that a funeral provider may discount the basic services fee for receiving remains, forwarding remains, immediate burials and direct cremations. Similarly, the fee may also be reduced in the case of a home funeral that uses fewer services. The letter states:
The Rule does not address home funerals because they were not considered at the time of the initial rulemaking proceeding or the subsequent amendment proceeding. Home funerals are analogous to the four basic services, however, because they likewise involve reduced or minimal use of a funeral provider's facilities and staff. As a matter of enforcement policy, therefore, and consonant with the fundamental goals of the Rule, staff will not object to a reduction in the basic services fee if it is commensurate with the limited use of the provider's facilities and services.
Many funeral consumer advocates have questioned whether a basic services fee should be allowed at all, given that the spirit of the Rule is to allow consumers to pick and choose only those goods and services they desire and to provide transparency in the pricing of funeral goods and services. The basic services fee is the only item on the general price list that the funeral provider may make non-declinable. This fee has tended to increase at a faster rate than prices for other funeral goods and services, providing funeral providers with a mechanism to increase profit margins with limited transparency, since the values of the goods and services bundled into the fee are not itemized.

-- Holly Stevens

October 8, 2009

Home funerals essay featured in Christian Century

Our essay on home funerals turned out to be a "cover story" in the Christian Century! Click here to see the online version.

September 18, 2009

It has been a while...

...since I've posted to the blog. My younger son moved here to join us in North Carolina while attending a local community college, and I've been relishing his more permanent presence. But I'm wanting to alert our readers to a happy development:

I learned a few weeks ago that an essay related to home funerals that I had submitted on speculation months ago to the Christian Century will indeed be published in the October 6 issue. The Christian Century is considered by many to be the flagship magazine of mainline Protestantism in America. My essay barely mentions Undertaken With Love, but encourages religious leaders and faith communities to view the home funeral and natural burial movements as opportunities for the Church to sanction simpler, less commercial funeral practices. Getting faith communities more involved with the home funeral movement is one of my dearest aims.Best to all....

July 8, 2009

Questions You've Wanted to Ask a Funeral Director But Didn't Know Whom to Ask

Just a note about something new coming to the Undertaken With Love site. We're in conversation with several licensed funeral directors in various parts of the nation who have a track record of being supportive of family-directed funerals or who serve primarily as home funeral guides but also are licensed as funeral directors. We're inviting them to serve as consultants to our site who can address questions related to home funerals that families would like to pose to a professional mortician.

Here are a few questions that come to my mind:
  • How can a family go about finding a flexible funeral home to assist on a very limited scale in a home funeral?
  • In terms of a home funeral, what are the realistic options following an autopsy?
  • What are the appropriate precautions for a death involving "X" condition (e.g., MRSA infection)?
In the meantime, let's gather some questions to pose. If you have a question you've longed to ask a mortician, please email them to us!

July 6, 2009

Michael Jackson to be Buried in Gold Plated Coffin

From "Connecting Directors," a social networking Internet forum for funeral professionals:

Michael Jackson to be Buried in Gold Plated Coffin: "Michael Jackson's final flamboyance will be the vehicle in which he's delivered to his final resting place: This 14 karat goldplated custom casket that will be the center of attention at Tuesday's memorial service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The $25,000 container from Batesville Casket Company ('because every family deserves a Batesville') is made of solid bronze, plated with 14-karat gold, and polished to a mirror finish. It's the same model in which James Brown was buried. No question about it, it'll be the fanciest coffin in the graveyard."

The Jackson family has every right to choose the casket of their choice. But I have to say I have much more respect for the choice Billy and Ruth Graham made when they selected their own caskets -- identical birch plywood ones built by prisoners of Louisiana State Penitentiary and sold for only $215 a piece. The Grahams' son, Franklin, had seen the caskets while visiting the prison on a mission and was struck by their simple dignity.

I have some sympathy for morticians whose profession requires them to be flexible in meeting the expectations of customers with wildly variant tastes in final things. Not all of them attempt to push conspicuously consumptive casket models onto their bewildered clients. At some point, we the consumers have to accept some responsibility, too, for the choices we make. As a person of faith, I would like to see more religious leaders take the higher ground in encouraging a funeral etiquette that is simpler, more affordable, more gentle on the earth, and ultimately more sacred than what we too often see practiced in America.