OT Funeral Home expenses

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This was a friend of my niece. I don't have any details about her family.

The web site says.......... In lieu of flowers, donations are requested to Miller Funeral Home to help with Katie?s expenses.

Without bothering to ask anyone that might know, I am thinking out loud that a funeral home would not usually assume the cost of a burial with the expectation of covering the costs with donations.

I think it is nice that people are given a chance to donate to her expenses, but what happens to the money that comes in after the burial? I would hope that it goes to the family and not the funeral home.

Reply to
Metspitzer
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I seriously doubt the funeral home is "assuming the cost" of the funeral/burial. It generally written as donations to _who/whatever_ care of the funeral home rather than to the funeral home. No way I'm donating _to_ the funeral home; they'll have to clean that up before I'm a sucker even if was best friend or family...

Reply to
dpb

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When my wife died of cancer in February, in lieu of flowers, all donations were to be sent to St. Judes Children's Hospital.

Reply to
willshak

I would think if it is a reputable funeral home, they would accept the donations strictly to a pre-arranged amount. Anything over would go to the family or some other charity.

If the family knows the owner of the funeral home, they may do it "on the cheap" and accept long term payment or something. I have to assume the family does not have cash or insurance to cover expenses and will accept the generosity of friends. I've seen fund raisers done for that reason.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

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that's normal. Donating to a charity instead of flowers.

What the OP is saying is not normal, is donations being made to the funeral home to help cover the cost of the death and funeral, furthurmore that the funeral home may have covered the cost and will recuperate it's costs from donations, in lieu of flowers.

Reply to
Hench

No one needs an expensive funeral. Cremations can be done for around $500. With a cremation you can eliminate the cost of a casket and embalming. Cremations are better for the environment as well.

Reply to
Fritz

What makes you think the family had $500 laying around? How are cremations better for the environment?

Reply to
Gordon Shumway

Where did Fritz say that a family had $500 lying around?

He did mention embalming. That would put some pretty nasty chemicals into a coffin to sit underground for a few hundred years before releasing said chemicals.

Typical embalming fluid contains a mixture of formaldehyde, glutaraldehyde, ethanol, humectants, and wetting agents and other solvents. The formaldehyde content generally ranges from 5 to 35 percent and the ethanol content may range from 9 to 56 percent.

Reply to
Dan Espen

Guess again. My prepaid cremation with minimum add-ons (notifications, obit, etc) started at $750 Mbut it didn't buy then. Several years later I did and it was then $1700. I wouild presume it is even higher now.

Harry K

Reply to
Harry K

That's what I want. Fast and cheap. If you want to see me and give me flowers, do it now when we can both enjoy the visit.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

I agree that it's uncommon for the funeral home to pocket donations, but the family is undoubtedly aware of that obituary and would have approved it. It could be that the family can't fully afford the cost of burying Katie, and has asked that donations be made to the funeral home to cover Katie's final expenses. I can see a funeral home doing that if they were aware of the family's difficult financial situation. It's obvious that Miller's is doing this funeral on a different basis than they normally would.

My father passed away several years ago, and the total cost including the casket, headstone, viewing at the funeral home the evening prior to the funeral, church services on the day of the funeral, funeral home services (such as flower arrangements and limousines), rental of a hall and catering of sandwiches and coffee at the hall after the funeral, ran very close to $10,000. That cost didn't cover the double plot of ground in the cemetery which cost about $4,000 IIRC.

And, that funeral was done relatively inexpensively. If we had purchased a more expensive casket and flowers, and better food by the caterers, it could have easily run to $15,000. But, I recall talking about that with my dad when I was young, and we both agreed that spending money on a lavish funeral for a person was a waste of money. The person on whom the money is being spent won't benefit in the least from the better quality wood in the coffin or the more expensive flowers. They'd have been better off to spend that extra money on themselves while they were still alive.

Reply to
nestork

I'm sipping some ethanol right now. I'll be pre-embalmed and ready for the cremation.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

Many people are buried in the US and elsewhere without any embalming. AIUI this may make viewing impossible (or at least repugnant). And it may mean that the burial has to be relatively soon, but not I think if the weather is not hot or if the body is refrigerated most of the time before the funeral. Which iiuc is often the case anyhow.

Often, a funeral home will tell the family that embalming is required by law, but they are usually or always lying when they say that.

Last I heard, cardboard caskets are available from Wal-Mart, but I can imagine a funeral home refusing to use one. I wonder if any funeral homes sell them. I don't know if caskets are really required or not.

More than one body can be buried in the same grave. Even with a wooden casket, one can bury an additional person roughly every 20 or

25 years I think it is. Maybe some cemeteries don't permit this or it would be more popular.
Reply to
micky

Maybe not. Apparently t hat would be a violation of the law, though it turn out to be necessary to remind them of that.

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"Be prepared for some resentment from the mortician at losing a big slice of the funeral profit if you obtain a casket elsewhere?your right to do so is protected by federal law." " Note: The funeral home may NOT add a "handling fee" if you purchase a casket on your own."

"A few states?Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Virginia?with strong funeral industry lobbies, do not permit anyone other than a mortician to sell a casket or coffin. A few brave souls are trying to buck the funeral boards in those states. Look for folks selling or building "hope chests" as there is no law in any state to keep you from using one to move a body."

I was actually considering making my own casket for fun. That is, I need a woodworking project. My uncle built a chest big enough for a body when he was in highschool, and my mother used it for a long time to store things. But my house is full and I have no room for it.

Reply to
micky

Hatched, Matched and Despatched, (Christening Marriage Funeral,) Everything's expensive in the USA.

What happens if there's no money to "dispose" of a corpse" in America?

Reply to
harry

Normal practice over here in the UK. But see this for days of yore.

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In some countries, these can be visited.

It's quite common over here for people to be buried in wicker coffins as environmentally friendly. You can bury someone in your garden too.

Reply to
harry

My *guess* is that the funeral home agreed to be the 'collector' of the funds. They don't actually say 'funeral expenses' so it might be for medical expenses.

My wife died last month. The lawyer was explaining about some of the debts she incurred and mentioned that in NY, the first people to get a cut of the estate are the lawyer and the funeral home. I'm not surprised that the lawyer lobby was able to get that law passed-- but did they need the funeral home lobby to help?

After they get their *full* payment, the rest gets divvied up amongst the creditors.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

YMMV Here's an "$800" cremation that will actually run closer to $1500 once all the fees are paid.

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While I'm all for an inexpensive funeral, we went to the cheapest guy in town, opted for cremation, bought an urn from a private party, had no burial expense & it was about 2 grand. [and next month's Celebration of Life will be $2-3K more- but she, and her friends, deserve it.]

My biggest shock was that our local papers get $300 to run a standard obituary.

Jim

Reply to
Jim Elbrecht

That is $300 I'll be saving. The few people to notify will be on the phone. Services (very minimal) will be private. No need to tell a bunch of strangers that one of us passed.

If you don't care enough to keep in touch now, I don't care enough to tell you that I'm gone.

I know a guy that took his wife's casket from the funeral home to the cemetery in the back of his pickup truck. I think some states have laws about transporting bodies though.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

This may just be badly worded, too. It is not at all unusual to ask for donations to a surviving kid's college fund or to help with their expenses, especially if very young. Most often this will go to a trust fund of some sort. Could be what they meant to say.... or not.

Reply to
Kurt Ullman

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