Preneed: A Pandora's Box of Problems
Fall is the time when many cemeteries host their most effective marketing program: voices from the past.
In conjunction with a local community theater, the cemetery will research their “residents” for interesting characters to portray. The community theater actors will then bring those characters to life during a tour of the cemetery. These tours generate…
The cemetery is not dying, it is evolving.
Since its creation in the 1830’s, America’s public cemetery has gone through three major evolutions. When American was an agrarian society, we buried our dead in a small section of the family farm. As towns grew into cities, the public cemetery was created out of necessity. Located…
It would be my assumption that the majority of the country’s cemeteries do not maintain a trust for the maintenance and care of its graves. While this may differ from state to state, most states’ perpetual care statutes exempt small family cemeteries, not for profit cemeteries, municipal cemeteries, county cemeteries and church cemeteries from their…
For several years, the media have been making these dire predictions…
These are tough times for cemeteries. Too many planned on a steady revenues from grave sales, and have not trusted enough funds for future maintenance expenses. Grave sale revenues have been dramatically cut by the public’s acceptance of cremation. Subsequent to the Great Recession of 2008, many of our funeral home clients reported a significant…
It only took 15 months, but the Missouri State Board finally approved a rule to clarify what fees a preneed seller may charge when offering a guaranteed price contract to consumers. Low investment returns from insurance and trusts forced many funeral homes to stop offering guaranteed price contracts to consumers. Funeral homes’ cost increases were…
Effective July 1st, the cemetery laws of Virginia and Georgia are each amended to authorize fixed distributions from cemetery perpetual care trusts. They join Florida, Tennessee, Michigan, Missouri and Iowa in embracing some form of the unitrust option for cemetery care fund distributions. The unitrust option is a dramatic departure from the net…
The Missouri legislature has passed a bill to authorize county commissioners to diversify their cemetery trusts. Prior to the passage of House Bill No. 51 Missouri’s counties were restricted in how they could invest cemetery care funds. Essentially, a Missouri county could invest care funds only in government bonds. But, since the mortgage bond crisis…
Earlier this year, the dispute between a Missouri cemetery and an independent monument dealer made local news. The cemetery had given notice to several lot owners that memorial benches they had placed on graves were going to be removed. While the cemetery was permitting certain types of benches to remain, other benches proved difficult for…
In our last post, we used Allan Sloan’s article on the Treasury bond market to highlight the investment exposures to death care trusts. Today we will look at how the Treasury market is also impacting funeral homes that rely upon insurance for preneed funding. Mr. Sloan’s article alluded to insurance companies being required by statute…