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… Continue Reading
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Cemetery Care Funds: Virginia and Georgia Join the Unitrust Movement
Posted in Care Funds, CemeteriesEffective 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 income distributions… Continue Reading
Missouri County Cemeteries: Legislation to Allow Trust Diversification
Posted in Care Funds, CemeteriesThe 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 of… Continue Reading
A Treasury Market Out of Whack: Putting a hurt on death care funds
Posted in Care Funds, Cemeteries, Compliance, InvestmentsThe July 25th Marketplace Morning Report on National Public Radio included a segment called Allan Sloan’s lessons on bond investments. Mr. Sloan is a business columnist for the Washington Post who recently wrote that the current Treasury bond market is “out of whack”, and poses a risker investment than the stock markets. Mr. Sloan wrote:… Continue Reading
Cemetery Care Fund Requirements: Clarifying the Math
Posted in Care Funds, LegislationLegislation was introduced this week in the Kansas Legislature, and one of the bill’s changes seeks to clarify how cemetery care fund requirements can be computed. We have found this a source of confusion for cemeteries and regulators in many states. Depending upon the type of interment right purchased, the care fund requirement is often… Continue Reading
Cemetery Care Trusts: The Public Interests
Posted in Care Funds, CemeteriesThe International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association (ICCFA) made an old but persuasive argument to get the IRS to exempt cemetery care trusts from the Medicare tax that will fund ObamaCare. As discussed in a prior post, the IRS had initially proposed to apply the tax to both cemetery care trusts and preneed trusts. With… Continue Reading
Principal Distributions: They are not always what they seem
Posted in Care Funds, CemeteriesA cemetery operator recently expressed his frustration with the trust officer of his care fund trust. An examination of the trust had cited the operator for inappropriate distributions from principal with regard to expense payments. We suggested to the operator that it is very common for trustees to set up care fund accounts with a… Continue Reading