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One message that can be taken from the FAMIC’s Talk of a Lifetime campaign is that funeral directors need to re-think their prearrangement procedures.  Perhaps too much emphasis has been given to preneed, and not enough to the planning process.  Prearrangement marketing and procedures have often been crafted by the funeral home’s preneed funding agent. …

The Memorial Business Journal recently reported on findings from the NFDA’s 2014 Consumer Awareness and Preferences Study.   Some of the findings may not come as much of a surprise to funeral directors, such as consumer demands are changing.  But, findings regarding how many respondents have made efforts to prearrange, and prepay, for funerals were…

It has been almost ten years since the return on Government bonds fell below 5%.  But bond returns did not hit bottom until four years later when the sub-prime mortgage market collapsed.  Those conditions threatened the nation’s credit markets, and so, in 2008, the Federal Reserve Board initiated a stimulus program involving the purchase of…

In has been almost twenty years since the Balanced Budget Act of 1995 introduced the concept of a simplified tax return for preneed trusts.  Initially, the “Qualified Funeral Trust” concept called for a flat 15% tax on accounts with contributions of $5,000 or less.  A conference committee succeeded in getting a higher contribution limitation ($7,000)…

Tax day is only a week away, and preneed trust returns will look a little different this year.  As we reported back in December, the IRS took the position that preneed trusts are subject to the Medicare Tax used to fund the Affordable Health Care Act.  Accordingly, Federal Form 1041QFT now requires the reporting of…

Over the past few months, we have been pressing state officials in Illinois and Nebraska on the issue of who is the state’s collection agent for excess preneed funds.  Is it the funeral director or the funding source (the preneed trustee or the preneed insurance carrier)?

Back in 2010, the Missouri State Board of Embalmers…

Since President Obama unveiled the new MyRA as his plan to revive Americans’ saving habits, we have been making comparisons between funding for retirements and preneed.   Like the MyRA, the non-guaranteed preneed contract could represent more of an introduction to preplanning funding than the final preneed product.  As the AARP acknowledged a few years ago,…

The reversal of the Heffner decision generated a wide range of comments, but those made by Wilson Beebe resonated most with our initial review of the decision.  The lower court decision was based on a challenge that the Pennsylvania Funeral Law was unconstitutional on its face.   A law can also be challenged as unconstitutional because…

Our recent post on similarities of the MyRA and non-guaranteed preneed concluded with references to how criticisms of President Obama’s new retirement account were applicable to preneed.  One such criticism relates to the lack of investment performance, but we will save that issue for a future date.  For this post we want to address the…