As suggested in our prior Cemetery Preneed Exemption post, Missouri’s endowed care cemetery law (Chapter 214.270 et seq) has a huge flaw when it comes to religious cemeteries: they are either all in or all out. Religious cemeteries often have good cause for seeking exemption from state endowed care laws. Our religious cemetery clients
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Grantor Care Funds: Too Small to Pay for Flowers
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…
Death Care Trade Associations: Will New Blood Be Enough?
With the Dead Beat’s permission, we are sharing at a column they ran earlier this summer. An anonymous contributor suggested that Death Care associations are headed for obsolescence. The author noted that attendance at Midwest conventions have dropped dramatically, and attributed this in part to a failure to adapt meetings and conventions to the…
Missouri County Cemeteries: Legislation to Allow Trust Diversification
The 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…
Preneed Shortfalls: Extended Installment Options
For consumers who need installments to pay for their preneed arrangement, funeral directors report that the $100 monthly payment is the comfort threshold for most individuals. For a widow planning her own funeral, the $100 monthly payment will require an installment term of six years or longer. If the widow needs to also cover an…
Cemetery Rules and Regulations: the right to control cremation benches
Earlier this year, the dispute between a Missouri cemetery and an independent monument dealer made local news. The cemetery had given notice to several lot owners that memorial benches they had placed on graves were going to be removed. While the cemetery was permitting certain types of benches to remain, other benches proved difficult for…
Talk of a Lifetime: Restarting the Prearrangment Process
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. …
Cemetery Care Fund Reports: The Operator’s Vicarious Liability
Typically, the standard by which a cemetery is judged to be abandoned is whether the grass is getting cut. But for licensed cemeteries, some states’ laws may also include provisions to deem a cemetery abandoned when regulatory reports are not filed. Care fund reports are intended to inform the cemetery regulator whether the operator is…
The Fed’s Tapering Plan: A Bumpy Road for Death Care Trusts?
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…
Form 1041QFT: Reducing Tax Liabilities
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…