Cemeteries

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Missouri law, like most states’, restricts cemeteries to being either exclusively for human burials or for animal burials.   Accordingly, it has been illegal for Missouri cemeteries to honor a lot owner’s request to be buried with a pet.  However, legislation has been introduced that would authorize Missouri cemeteries for the burial of both humans and…

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…

  • It is inevitable that a cemetery will run out of graves (and revenues) and eventually become the ward of taxpayers.
  • For cemeteries with ample inventory of graves, the public’s embrace of cremation translates to declining grave sales and the acceleration of the cemetery’s demise.

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…

Preneed planning often begins with the purchase of a cemetery plot or cremation niche.  If that purchase includes a marker or monument, the cemetery will typically seek to deliver the marker so that it may avoid cost increases incurred with regard to granite and bronze.  But, many of us do not like to be reminded…

In an unusual move for a death care regulator, the Federal Trade Commission weighed in on the preneed turf war that has erupted between Pennsylvania funeral directors and StoneMor Partners.   At the request of the chairman for a Pennsylvania legislative committee, the FTC responded with a detailed letter warning against various bill proposals aimed at…

The 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 …