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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…

Since the onset of Covid, the death care industry has experienced an uptick in preneed sales.  As witnessed recently on the Bankrate website, the financial planning industry has taken notice.  Bankrate is a website that provides comparisons of various financial products, and recently posted an article titled “The pros and cons of funeral trusts…

In our next post on cemetery preneed, we want to revisit a post from June 2012 (Cemetery Preneed Challenges: bucket accounting).  As discussed in that post, the cemetery prearrangement differs from its funeral counterpart because the cemetery can deliver property and merchandise prior to the purchaser’s death.  When establishing a preneed program, a…

When selling interment rights on a preneed basis, it was once very common for cemeteries to include a forfeiture clause in the sales agreement.  If the consumer used installment payments to pay for a grave space and defaulted on that payment plan, the terms of the contract would declare all payments applied to the contract…

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 newest edition of the Missouri Preneed Exam Handbook has some significant problems.  The one we will discuss today is ambiguous instructions regarding the review of preneed contracts.  Paragraph 13 of the Handbook’s scope of financial examination states:

13) Staff shall look at 100% of all active preneed contracts that have been sold since the…

The Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors introduced a new preneed examination handbook at its October meeting.  (Click the following hyperlink to access the preneed handbook.)  The proposed handbook would change the emphasis of the preneed exams from contract and recordkeeping compliance to tracking consumer funds paid to the funeral home.

For…

Our first recommendation to the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors is that they assume, and maintain, control over the preneed examination procedures.    The exam procedures implemented two years ago were never submitted to the Board for review and approval.  Accordingly, the examination procedures handbook should remind the staff that any change made…

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…

At its April 25th meeting, the Missouri State Board unwound two controversial staff proposals: mandatory consumer disclosures for preneed contracts and the formation of an insurance funded contract.  With 20 CSR 2120-3.205 , the Board staff sought to require Missouri preneed sellers to provide consumers with a two page list of disclosures.  Those disclosures…