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A few weeks ago the Missouri Embalmers and Funeral Directors Association posted a YouTube video explaining their take on preneed portability under Missouri law.  The MFDEA frequently posts videos in response to industry queries, and for the association to spend 37 minutes on portability suggests that it is fielding numerous requests from MFT providers.  The…

A former Kentucky funeral director has been charged with multiple felony preneed thefts, some of which occurred 25 years ago.   Various news sources report that Donald Creech began pocketing consumer preneed payments as early as 1996. The consumer preneed payments were to have been forwarded to the Kentucky Funeral Directors Association’s master trust.   Until he…

Dear Senator Schatz,

We appreciate that your Senate Appointment Committee has a packed hearing date for April 20th.  So, the Missouri funeral industry not represented by the Missouri Funeral Directors and Embalmers Association requests a single question be asked of Ms. Solon:

If confirmed as executive director of the Division of Professional Registration…

This past August we received an email from the Gottcha Board asking about availability to attend a closed meeting call.  Anticipating a client was in trouble, we responded that we would accommodate the Board’s request.  However, the Board’s purpose for the call was to make an inquiry about representation to resolve the dispute with the…

This past Friday morning, news outlets across the country picked up an Associated Press story regarding Governor Parson’s October ouster of Missouri’s Gottcha Board.  (For those not familiar with the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, the tag “Gottcha Board” was first given to the Board in 2020 by the Missouri Funeral…

The State of Missouri seems hell-bent on creating work for Jefferson City attorneys.  As we reported earlier this summer (You were Warned!), the Division of Professional Registration blundered in its first move to control how the State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors conducts inspections of funeral homes.  Since then, the Division has…

On August 30, 2021, the legal saga of National Prearranged Services came to a rather anticlimactic conclusion.  In a relatively short decision, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Judge Richard Webber’s July 2019 judgment that awarded $102,135,393.07 damages against PNC Bank, a successor to the NPS preneed trusts.  The final damages award is a…

A festering dispute between Missouri’s State Funeral Board and funeral directors association came to a head in a public conference call today.    The State Board scheduled the meeting in response to  its parent agency (the Division of Professional Registration) blocking the Board’s hiring of an investigator.  The Board held the meeting to discuss what actions…

In our third post on Missouri’s endowed care cemetery audits we look at the request for the cemetery’s legal documents.  The current audit notice  requests copies of the cemetery’s trust agreement, rules and regulations, contract forms, deed forms, brochures and any other materials making an endowed care representation.  In essence, the audit is going to…