In this day when a the cost of an average funeral is said to range anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000, the idea of a “home funeral” is becoming more and more popular.
“When my book first Caring for Your Own Death came out in 1987, I was pretty much treated as a freak and it was maybe once a month that I would get an inquiry from other people wanting to know about home funerals. Today, twenty five years later, I get an inquiry every day, or almost every day, wanting to know about home funerals.” said author Lisa Carlson in an on-line interview with The Huffington Post. Carlson is the co-author of Final Rights, the book largely considered a “must read” for anyone thinking of by-passing a funeral director and conducting a loved one’s funeral, or even a burial, on his or her own.
Below is a brief guide for any family exploring the idea of a home funeral for a loved one.
What the laws says:
Though states very widely in the way they regulate funerals, home funerals are generally legal (though often with many restrictions) in all but 8 states that explicitly require a funeral director and/or a licensed funeral home to oversee all memorial services and burials. Those states are Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska and New Jersey.
Consumers are cautioned, even in the other 42 states, to consult a funeral consumer’s group in their area before planning a home funeral. These groups can generally be found fairly easily through an internet search and their staff and active members are well versed in state laws that will apply to their plans.
Laws can change very quickly – and the trend in recent decades is toward allowing consumers to conduct their own funerals with little involvement from the government. Anyone planning a home funeral is well advised to thoroughly research laws that may be in effect currently.
Another source of information, of course, is the state’s official agency that oversees funerals and funeral homes. A word of caution about these groups, however: they are often staffed by people who are involved in, or sympathetic toward, the funeral home industry which has a financial interest in outlawing, or heavily regulating, home funerals. Many consumers have reported that these state agencies, even in states where home funerals are legal, have discouraged them, or even blatantly lied to them, regarding home funerals. If your family desires a home funeral and finds itself discouraged after a call to a state agency, contacting a funeral consumer’s group in your area is definitely a must.
Generally speaking, most experts agree that the best way to assure a home funeral is legal is to have written instructions or such a memorial from the deceased himself. There have been cases, even in states where home funerals are otherwise illegal, in which the deceased’s own, very clearly communicated, wishes were determined by courts (both state and federal) to override all laws. Families who wish to make home funerals a tradition – as it once was universally – are encouraged to have all members write instructions to that affect and leave those in a safe place that can be easily accessed after their death.
Why would one choose to hire a funeral home?
Though home funerals are a growing trend, they still account for a relatively small percentage of funerals (no one is even yet keeping thorough records of how many families choose home funerals, in fact). So it’s obvious that funeral homes remain an important, viable industry and their services, despite the cost, are appreciated by millions of people each year. Writer/funeral director Thomas Lynch offered this explanation in an interview with National Public Radio. “On the one hand, we’re stuck between the will to do nothing at all, which is, say, pick up our cell phone and our Visa card and disappear our dead from the intensive care ward where we didn’t have much to do with him; and then there’s the will to do everything we can, which is we want to dress our dead, wash our dead, and bury our dead with our own shovels. These are also good instincts. For many of us, we fall someplace in between.”
Funeral homes and funeral directors can be an excellent resource, no matter whether a family is fully using their services or not. It is somewhat common for families to hire funeral directors to organize and plan their home funerals, in fact. Still other families report that they have taken full responsibility for organizing and hosting their home funeral, but have had a funeral director on stand-by as a consultant when unanticipated questions and problems arise. For a step-by-step look at organizing a meaningful service, see A Planning Guide For A Memorial Service.
It should be noted that funeral directors are generally not legally required to accept requests that they assist with home funerals, and several cases have been documented in which funeral directors have used such requests as a means for unethically discouraging home funerals and convincing a family to hire the funeral home’s full services instead. Care should therefore be exercised when discussing plans for a home funeral with a licensed funeral director. It is possible that he or she may offer bad, or even dishonest, advice.
What help is available?
The previously mentioned funeral consumer’s groups (many of which were started by people whose bad experience with a funeral home led them to become activists in honor of their deceased loved one) are a great place to start for all who desire to hold a home funeral for a loved one. Aside from those great resources, there are many online retailers of funeral products such as cremation urns, caskets, headstones, and memorial jewelery. Most of these establishments will sell to the public without any hassle. Unlike a funeral home, they will not usually inquire about a death certificate or about a family’s plan for a funeral – and, since they are generally not in the funeral planning business, they will certainly not attempt to sell any funeral planning services. They will simply provide goods that have been ordered, and their prices are often a fraction of what they would be if the products were purchased from a funeral home.
While many families choose to create their own memorial products themselves for their home funeral, many others are so intimidated by, say, the idea of building a casket or headstone, that they turn to a funeral home for these products. And, this can lead to the funeral home being contracted, at a greater costs than is really necessary, to conduct an entire funeral. It may be comforting to know that retail options exist in which funeral products can be purchased from reputable, friendly companies committed to providing only the products requested – without sales pressure to buy other products or services.