The Reckoning
What this actually costs, what you are legally entitled to, and which parts of the bill were invented in a sales meeting.
Here is the trick, and it is not complicated. You will make the single largest unplanned purchase of your life inside 72 hours of the worst news you have ever had, from a salesman you will meet once, in a room designed to stop you asking questions.
There is no comparison shopping. There is no cooling-off period in most states. There is a package price that hides which of the eleven things you just bought were optional, and a social convention that says haggling over your mother is monstrous.
It is not monstrous. It is the last piece of admin you will ever do for someone you loved, and doing it well is a form of love. This section exists to make that possible.
Federal law is already on your side more than you think. Under the FTC Funeral Rule, a funeral provider has to give you an itemised price list, has to quote prices over the phone, cannot require you to buy a package to get a single item, and cannot refuse to handle a casket you bought elsewhere. Most people are never told any of this.
Published
- Splitting the ashes between familyLegal everywhere, easier than the funeral home lets on, and the fight is usually about something else.
- What to do with the ashes: every option, priced and legalKeep, scatter, bury, split, wear, or sail them out. What each costs and who you need to ask.
- Where it is legal to scatter ashesThe ocean, rivers, national parks, your garden, somebody else’s garden. The actual rules.
- Green burial: what it costs and what is marketingA shroud, a hole and no concrete box. Real plot prices and which “eco” options are theatre.
- Somebody died. The first 48 hours, in order.Who to call first, how many death certificates to order, and what can wait.
- Direct cremation: what it actually costsThe same oven at two prices, thousands of dollars apart, and how to shop it in twenty minutes.
- The FTC Funeral Rule, in plain EnglishThe price list they must hand you, and the fees they legally cannot charge.
In the works
Next up, in order:
- Embalming is almost never required by law. Here is who told you it was, and why
- The casket you are allowed to buy somewhere else and make them use
- Pre-need plans: the ones that survive the funeral home going under, and the ones that do not
Want one of these bumped up the list, or have a bill you would like us to take apart?Send it over. Names removed, always.
We are writers, not lawyers or funeral directors. Anything here that matters legally or financially, verify with someone licensed in your state.