The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (the OCC) supervises the fiduciary activities of national chartered banks, and in February, updated the guidelines used by its examiners. The “Personal Fiduciary Activities” booklet includes a section on pre-acceptance due diligence that fiduciaries should conduct before agreeing to serve as trustee for an account.
lawsuit
Testimony Guidelines for the NPS Experts
By Bill Stalter on
Posted in NPS/Lincoln
In August, litigants to the NPS civil trial were required to file expert opinion reports with the court. Initially, there were essentially 8 defendant banks, and most had retained one or more experts to testify at trial. As a consequence, a plethora of expert reports were filed with the court. Many of the experts offered…
The Cassity Reply to Dismissal: Not Without a Pass for My Son
By Bill Stalter on
Posted in NPS/Lincoln, Uncategorized
Doug Cassity has filed a motion to modify the order dismissing him from the SDR’s civil lawsuit. Mr. Cassity asserts that he and his family should be freed of the reign of terror and wrongdoing of the Texas regulators and their attorneys. Seeking a dismissal with prejudice, Mr. Cassity seeks to have the SDR’s claims…
Being Hung out to Dry: The Pennsylvania Board of Funeral Directors
By Bill Stalter on
Federal Judge John Jones III has teed off (again) on the Pennsylvania Board of Funeral Directors. Awarding attorneys fees of more than a million dollars and issuing a permanent injunction against the State Board, Judge Jones rebuked Board members for their failure to show initiative towards a legislative fix to a Truman era problem. And…
Pennsylvania: knocking down fences
By Bill Stalter on
Heritage is the term that the death care industry uses to describe the relationship each funeral home or cemetery attempts to forge with the community through years of service. Heritage reflects a commitment to the community, and through that commitment, the operator can expect the community’s business.
Initially, the vast majority of funeral directors fought…
The Light at the End of the Tunnel: the IFDA/Merrill Lynch Settlement
By Bill Stalter on
For the past three and half years, many Illinois funeral homes teetered on the brink of financial crisis when the IFDA master trust was forced to write down the value of preneed accounts invested in a special tax exempt fund. As reported last week by the NFDA’s Memorial Business Journal*, the “new” IFDA has negotiated…
Perpetual Care and Capital Gains: the government’s rainy day fund?
By Bill Stalter on
For the past few years, some Kansas cemeteries have been getting nasty grams from their regulator about their care fund trustee’s treatment capital gains taxes. Kansas, like most states, requires a portion of each grave space sale (interment right) to be contributed to a fund or trust for the future care of the cemetery. Kansas…
The IFDA: Charting a Correcting Course
By Bill Stalter on
Posted in IFDA
As reported by the Memorial Business Journal*, the Illinois Funeral Directors Association has taken back the helm. For the past three years, the IFDA has been a floundering ship in risk of sinking. The master trust that paved the Association’s growth, has been threatening to bring it down. The IFDA took a crucial step…
I’m a funeral director, not a fund manager!
By Bill Stalter on
Preneed scandals in Illinois, Missouri, Texas, and California have state regulators moving to implement new audit procedures. But with new laws passed in the wake of NPS and state master trust problems, the frequency and scope of the future audit could change dramatically. It is no secret that the scope of the preneed audit in…
California: the delay in updating
By Bill Stalter on
Microsoft’s early efforts to force regular program updates were a nightmare. Like a gremlin that visited at night, the update often changed default settings that you never completely understood in the first place. Sometimes the update would impact the compatibility of other critical programs. To avoid the hassle of these updates, I toggled off the…