There is an old saying that goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink”.  I think that the meaning of that phrase, in human terms is something like this, “You can tell a person the situation, but you cannot make them act on it”.

In my day of working at the funeral home, I owned a pre-arrangement insurance agency, I owned and operated a funeral home, and I was a licensed  insurance agent.  As I recall when I was asked by potential consumer clients to list the possible costs of their death care services, I tried not only to list them all, but even include the inclusion of money for potential unforeseen circustances of a death, such as death away from home.

And, as anybody who ever put a preneed client into this type of policy, I tried to get the amount paid in as complete as possible.  However, there are times when a client with, let’s say a potential $10,000 funeral cost would only contribute $7,500 for the account.  The agent would more than likely take that amount as it was a pretty good “start”, even though it wasn’t complete, for one paying for their death care costs. Or, as sometimes happened, the client would take care of all expenses at the funeral home and tell us that he was going to do the same at the cemetery. . . . yet, the cemetery part never got done.

Then later, when that person died, the children would come in and proclaim, “Dad has everything taken care of”.  At that time it was then appropriate to pull out the prearrangement file and show that the expected “at death” costs were $10,000, but Dad “elected” to only put away $7,500. . . or, they would realize that Dad never made any arrangements at the cemetery. . . So, no, everything was not taken care of.

If you have been in that situation, you know it is uncomfortable. . . .Uncomfortable for the children who are now looking at potentially paying “out of pocket” for expenses that they thought were taken care of and uncomfortable for the funeral director because he/she has to break this news.

It puts children in a tough dilemma. . . maybe they can lower the quality of what Dad wanted to pay the other charges or the cemetery, but in doing that many feel bad for “cheapening” what their parent wanted. . .so in most cases they find a way to pay the bills.

I recently read this article from Great Britain where two funeral directors are lamenting that “Funeral Plans” generally do not include any money for the expenses at the cemetery. . . . and in London, according to the article, cemetery costs for the plot, interment fee, and headstone can total more than the rest of the funeral costs combined.

They believe that the average preneed policy in London, which asks for earth burial, is over US$ 7,500 short of funds.  It’s an issue that funeral directors Sharon and Paul McLean, who run Integrity Funeral Care, believe needs to be addressed.

Says Paul McLean, “The most expensive part of any burial is the price of the plot and in London in particular we’re talking thousands of pounds, sometimes a five figure sum, just for that nine feet by four feet hole in the ground.  The cost of a plot and of several other burial services are rarely fully covered in funeral plans.”

McLean suggested, “. . .they (funeral plans) could also be renamed as something like ‘Funeral Contribution Plans’ to more accurately describe what they do.”

Integrity Funeral Care – London website

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

Funeral Director Daily take:  I’ve found that funeral and cemetery pre-arrangement plans can often times be confusing to differing generations of families.  However, they are very seldom confusing to the parties involved such as the funeral director/agent and preneed people setting up the account.

Both those parties seem to know and understand what they have done.  However, when the clientele eventually tells their children they usually do it by saying, “Mom and I were down to the funeral home and took care of all of our arrangements”.  Very seldom do the parents pull out the documents and explain “to what extent and with what limitations” they have pre-arranged. . . .It is simply, “we have taken care of our arrangements” and then the subject is dropped until one of the parents dies.

I don’t know why that is the case. . . but it is.  Maybe it is because when together with mom and dad and the grandkids everybody is excited about “Life” and “Death” is just a subject that we don’t want to talk about.

But, not talking about it does cause problems in the future.  There has been a lot done to try to alleviate this problem, such as the National Funeral Director’s “Have the Talk of  Lifetime” program, but the issue still remains.

In the meantime if you deal with pre-arrangements continue to be as complete and thorough as you can be.  The extra time and effort will pay off with less mis-understanding in the future.

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