William Stalter is the founder of Stalter Legal Services and the Preneed Resource Company. Bill focuses his law practice on preneed and death care compliance, serving banks, funeral homes, crematories, and cemeteries. He has written multiple published articles
By Bill Stalter on Posted in Churches/RitualWe came across the Dioceses of Liverpool website some time ago when researching the income tax consequences of church sponsored preneed programs. We had found that preneed funeral programs in England, Canada and Australia were often established and operated independent of the funeral home. With a high cremation rate, English churches saw an opportunity to… Continue Reading
By Bill Stalter on Posted in CemeteriesIn its past two newsletters, my local chapter of the Funeral Consumer Alliance has reported on the difficulties in finding cemeteries that permit natural burials. In the Spring newsletter, the FCA of Greater KC reported on how the Catholic Cemeteries of Northeast Kansas was reconsidering natural burials at one of its six cemeteries. In the… Continue Reading
By Bill Stalter on Posted in Compliance,Funeral,PreneedMissouri’s death care regulators will play host to their peers next week when the North American Death Care Regulators Association convention is held in St. Louis. When you host a convention in NPS’ backyard, the agenda needs to include sessions on what went wrong. The final session of the agenda will catch every regulator’s eye,… Continue Reading
By Bill Stalter on Posted in CemeteriesHere is proof that readership of newspapers is going down. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel called a few weeks back about a Wisconsin legislative bill that sought investment freedom for cemetery trust funds. With the legislative battle that was waged a year ago in Wisconsin, we had expected the bill might represent a renewed effort to… Continue Reading
By Bill Stalter on Posted in Funeral,Insurance Funded,Preneed,Trust FundedNot that close, even from the 30,000-foot view. That’s our assessment of the Morningstar analysis of preneed and its impact on the death care industry. In “Dark Clouds for the Death-Care Industry”, a stock analyst attempted to explain the preneed transaction, and then provide an assessment of the impact of preneed on the profitability of… Continue Reading
By Bill Stalter on Posted in Churches/Ritual,Cremation,FuneralA few months ago, a stock analyst issued a critique warning against investment in the industry’s public companies. A few weeks later, the critique got a second wind when chat pages and social media forums picked up on the critique’s conclusion, and circulated the article as proof that certain trends will ‘haunt’ all funeral homes… Continue Reading
By Bill Stalter on Posted in ReformConventions and seminars provide trade associations and trade journals important sources of revenue. Accordingly, the death care industry has plenty of ‘retreat opportunities’ to choose from. However, there will be a death care convention held in Montgomery Alabama this weekend that will be off limits to funeral directors, cemeterians and their legions of industry vendors. Death care… Continue Reading
By Bill Stalter on Posted in Fiduciary,PreneedThe ICCFA’s November Magazine included an article by Craig Martin that provides good advice for all death care trusts. Death care trusts are notoriously bad performers, and if operators are to improve investment performance they need to work more closely with their fiduciaries and portfolio managers. Mr. Martin offers 5 tips that are equally applicable… Continue Reading
