Fellow Durhamite Barry Yeoman has a piece up in AARP Magazine, R.I.P. Off, about the fleecing of thousands of people by the poorly regulated funeral industry.
The latest scam involves the fairly popular practice of pre-paid funeral plans, where you buy your arrangements (embalming/cremation services, burial plots, caskets, etc.) ahead of time at today’s prices. It’s a great idea in principle, since people don’t want to have to think about such matters at such a stressful time.
And that’s what these scam artist death merchants count on. Take the case of Forest Hill South, a mortuary and cemetery located in Memphis. Audrey and Carl Brewer purchased a pre-pay plan for the family, forking over almost $1300 over time for funeral services. And you know what happened?
The Brewers had no reason to question the honesty of Forest Hill. Its three locations had been in business since 1888, serving the rich and the poor alike, including such luminaries as Elvis Presley and his mother, Gladys. Like the Brewers, thousands of customers from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas had also trusted the company’s reputation enough to buy pre-need policies. Then in July 2006, one of Forest Hill’s new owners, Oklahoma oilman Clayton Smart, called a press conference to announce he was invalidating 13,500 pre-paid funeral contracts, including the Brewers’. While police stood by to prevent a customer riot, Smart explained that any contract holder who wanted to use his or her pre-need policy would have to pay an additional $4,000, more or less, at the time of death, even if the plan was already paid in full. “Obviously, things were a lot cheaper in 1965,” Smart explained. “I wouldn’t have bought the business if I thought I’d have to honor those contracts.”As Barry’s report continues, it’s pretty clear that this was not an isolated incident. People (and their relatives) who purchase these policies are getting ripped off as outrageous excuses and bait-and-switch tactics by these death merchants rip them off at the worst possible time in the life of a family.Officials with the Tennessee attorney general’s office offer a different explanation for why Smart wasn’t honoring the contracts. They allege Smart and his partner, attorney Stephen Smith, drained the company’s pre-need trust funds of $20 million shortly after they purchased Forest Hill in 2004. Those funds, which were part of the purchase and were earmarked to pay for the pre-paid funerals and cemetery care, “were supposed to be in very conservative investment vehicles,” says Martha Davis, a senior counsel in the state’s bankruptcy division. Instead, she says, Smart and Smith diverted the money to risky hedge funds and unsecured loans owned by Quest Minerals and Exploration, an oil-and-gas company controlled by Smart’s family. The attorney general’s office says the Quest loans ended up being worthless.
More, including a question of the day, is below the fold.
According to the AARP, 23% of people 50 and older have signed pre-payment contracts for funerals and/or burials. Even those in the industry acknowledge the scandal is a significant problem.
“This is not every once in a while, and it is not just a few bad apples,” says Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance. “People want to believe that if they sign a check now for a pre-paid funeral, they can close their eyes and say, ‘La, la, la, everything’s going to be fine.’ It’s a dangerous delusion.” A delusion because too often funeral companies change hands, close their doors, or simply raid the trust funds where their customers’ payments are supposed to be securely collecting interest. As a result, when the services are needed, there’s no money left. Even worse, because of inconsistent state regulation and enforcement, there’s often no recourse for distressed families who thought everything was taken care of.If you’re looking to the feds for help, don’t hold your breath. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla., a state with a high senior population), so that’s not surprising) tried twice to introduce bills to protect consumers that enter pre-pay arrangements, but Congress never even took up the legislation.…But even customers dealing with trusted funeral homes must study their policies. Otherwise, details—often buried in the fine print—can pop up to surprise at the worst moment.
One of the most common complaints about pre-need involves the casket bait and switch: the customer asks for a specific casket, but when the time comes, it’s not available and the funeral home offers a lesser-quality model. In 1999 Katie Smith, a retired practical nurse, pre-paid a Chicago funeral home for her service. She chose a lavender casket. When she died in 2006, the mortuary insisted that a lavender casket had to be special-ordered and would take ten days to arrive. “I didn’t want to hold up the arrangements that long,” says Katie’s goddaughter, Alicia Hill, who reluctantly accepted an “iridescent pink” casket. Alicia believes her godmother would have been disappointed.
This is a lengthy and important read; I encourage you to read the rest. People who enter into these contracts get little if any help from the state when a deal goes bad. Many don’t mandate refunds to customers or allow them to transfer their policies to another funeral home if they relocate to another part of the country. Your money goes up in smoke.
Q of the day: have you done any advance planning so that your loved ones know your wishes when you pass away?
My mom wanted immediate cremation, no urn, no plot, no service. She didn’t believe in handing over cash to the death merchants. When she passed away in 1997, I followed her written wishes (though we had discussed it many times and was clear on what she wanted). A few days later the Cremation Society of the Carolinas sent me a plastic box containing a plastic bag with her ashes. I think the whole cost was around $500. My brother and I then flew up to NYC, where I cast her ashes into the East River from a pier in downtown Brooklyn, the borough she was born and grew up in.
We have the same philosophy — save the money for a good remembrance party afterwards.
34 Responses to “The death merchants scam you to the very end”
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Doesn’t look like the situation has changed that much from the time Jessica Mitford wrote “The American Way of Death”, which was the first muckracking book on the US funeral industry.
I’ve made my wishes known (which are much the same as your mother’s, only I’d just as soon my ashes just got put out with the week’s trash), but I haven’t made any formal arrangements.
I suppose I should, considering I’ll be fifty next year.
My dad died when i was six. At that time, my mom bought 4 plots next to each other for my dead dad, herself, my little brother and me.
So I know where I’m going to be buried, but it will probably still cost $10K b/c I live in Chicago and my plot is in Southern Indiana.
I think that’s the only sure thing you can count on–if you buy a specified plot. It’s real estate then, not a pre-pay scam.
I almost feel sorry for whichever lawyers Smart hires to try to get him out of these contracts. “Yes, my client had no intention of honoring his commitment to these families, who put their trust in him years ago to care for their loved ones after they passed on, but….ah, fuck this noise. I’m gonna go back to doing secured transactional work.”
I should start thinking about putting this stuff in writing. I prefer cremation (what they do with the ashes doesn’t really matter–I won’t be there). I absolutely do not want anything in a church.
Part of the other stuff, though, is who makes decisions. Right now, I’m comfortable (for the most part) with my parents, but when they pass, then who? I simply don’t trust my sister. Most of my friends are elsewhere in the country.
My grandmother recently passed away and she pre-paid for her funeral. My parents thought this was the case, but when they asked the funeral home about it, they claimed that they hadn’t received any money. Luckily, my mother never threw anything away, so my parents were able to prove that she had indeed paid. However, when my grandmother prepaid they told her that she wouldn’t have to keep the paperwork, they would keep it on their computers and in their files. Good thing she didn’t listen to them.
My masters thesis that I am working on right now is on green burials, which are growing in popularity. They are much more ecologically friendly and depending on the state, funeral home services are not needed at all. There is a growing movement often referred to as death midwifery where groups provide the services and the advice on how to care for your own dead, including holding services at your own home, and keeping the body cool til burial or cremation. And green burial grounds often allow people to dig the grave themselves and cover it up. Often a coffin is not required at all. Anyone interested should look into this further and hopefully it will catch on more.
I would rather be cremated than embalmed, but if it’s possible ot be buried in a pine box without preservation I’d prefer that. Regardless, I want a service, and I have told my husband of one song that must be played there, cuz I said so.
The service is up to the survivors. I asked that my body be used in whatever way is most needed: organ donation if possible, crime lab studies, med school use, fueling someone’s stove, or whatever. I’m considering a donation to that Bodyworks plasticizing group, but I missed the exhibition so I can’t be sure if that’s how I want my body used.
In the(se moments that I hope aren’t too close to the) end, I really don’t care about my body and if any family member wants some of me I’ll put in my will that they can have my teeth. Those make interesting necklaces.
One thing I’ve noticed moving to a small town and having my wife as clergy - the mortuary and funeral home is in like that with the local religious community.
The local home is locally owned and has been for at least 3 generations, so the flim-flammery and dishonest practices shouldn’t be an issue. But the cost of death - both in taxes and corporeal dispersal - is disgusting in it’s sale & inflation.
Service Corp International (the giant funeral-home chain) has a practice of actually buying the funeral home, but continuing to staff it with the people who originally owned it. That way people think “oh, this is the Thompson Funeral Home, it’s been in the family for generations” because they see Thompson running the place. But it’s owned by SCI.
I would rather be cremated than embalmed, but if it’s possible ot be buried in a pine box without preservation I’d prefer that.
Before I moved, I was a member of my synagogue’s burial society, which is a group of volunteers who help prepare people for burial. The body is not embalmed, but is respectfully washed, wrapped in linen and placed in a plain pine box. I don’t think it was ever pitched to anyone as “green”, but it is, and it doesn’t involve pushing the family to pay for expensive trappings. I would assume that a funeral home or a church group could do the same thing.
I absolutely do not want anything in a church.
If you can think of one, try to specify a non-church location where you would want your friends and family to get together to mingle and talk — a park, a theater, a bar, your favorite restaurant, etc. That way, it’s easier for your executor to stand up to your family if they try to insist that you “really” would have wanted a service in a church you never attended.
I’m also of the “useful parts” school — take what other people need and burn the rest. After hearing a series on a gross anatomy class on NPR, if I live to an age where I don’t have many useful parts left, I may donate my body to science and have the cremated remains returned to my family. Since we’re a two-state family, I’d probably want to divide my ashed and a little niche somewhere here in California and another near my mother’s grave in Illinois.
My husband and I already have our plots, on either side of our daughter’s grave. We wouldn’t have thought about it, except for her death. My mother’s will be adjacent and south of ours, my in-laws will be adjacent and south and west. (thank goodness I don’t believe in an afterlife, forever with my mother would kill me if I wasn’t already dead)
We haven’t figured out what we’re doing with our bodies though. I know the hubby wants to be buried, in a casket, and all that. No religion though. If I die before him, he’ll donate my parts like I’ve asked and bury me in the casket and all that. If he dies before me, I’ll have my parts donated, be cremated, and buried. He really has issues with cremation that I don’t have, and he would never go along with cremating me.
My grandpa, all I know is that his wishes specify that the last song played at his funeral be “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” (father of 4 girls, grandfather to 4 girls, greatgrandfather to 1 girl).
Pam, you look nearly identical to your beautiful mother.
I’m with Jon: Donate as much of my body to science/medicine/creepy museum exhibits, and cremate the rest.
In California (and perhaps other states), when you get cremated you have to be incinerated in a state-approved vessel, the least expensive of which is a $30 cardboard box. Sign me up!
I will leave behind me a legacy of thrift, so I assume my surviving family will honor my wishes and have a cheap post-death celebration. No funeral homes necessary.
One of the most reassuring things about getting married a few weeks ago is the knowledge that my new husband and I–not our parents–will get to decide what happens to our bodies if we die or are on life support.
Donate what can be used and burn the rest. We will mark a memorial on the family headstones with plaques and that is that. The only real estate my husband and I own are two plots in a very pretty cemetary. We own them, not leased for 99 years and so they will go to my son when we pass. They are full so we can’t actually be buried in them but they serve as a place to remember our loved ones. And they are scenic as all get out.
I’m still quite young, but I’ve actually thought about this. Regardless, my body is going to the Body Farm in Tennessee for anthropological study. You can also donate organs before your body is sent there. So, save the stuff you can use and then put me out to pasture to better understand natural decomposition. You can also donate your remains if you were cremated.
There’s always the Soylent Green option. There are worse fates…
What I want is a funeral pyre. I’ve got the location, the wood and the helpers. Now all I need to do is figure out how to do it without getting everyone arrested.
I appreciate this topic. I met a woman who served on our state’s cemetery licensing board. She had actual horror stories about the practices of some operators, like selling plots in wetlands or otherwise unsuitable locations.
I don’t think you can safely bank on plots as real estate. The big threat comes from what happens after all the plots are filled. Care of the site is then dependent on the financial health of the operator.
Cincinnati had an awful case where the owner basically abandoned his duties and the historic cemetery he owned. It turned into a big case, not only because it was a disgusting display of human behavior, but because the various governments didn’t want to set the precedent of letting cemeteries default on their obligations knowing that the government would take over the responsibilities.
Definitely try to see the exhibit before you make that commitment. I’m fascinated by anatomy and not at all squeamish about cadavers, and I assumed that the criticism stemmed from the attitude that putting the dead on display in any manner is disrespectful, so I thought I’d find it really interesting and not offensive in the slightest. When I actually saw it, I was shocked at how sensationalist and not educational the display was, and I did find it rather offensive (I’d be happy to elaborate, but I’ve already threadjacked enough for one comment
. Some of the people I went with completely disagreed, though, so ymmv.
[Sorry for the long comment about something that really isn’t my business…]
Taka beat me to it. I haven’t actually mentioned it to anyone in my family, but I want to go to the UTK body farm when my time is up.
After getting socked for the funeral/memorial service (did you know that in some places you can rent caskets to serve as a placeholder at the service) and for the plots, we now have the pleasure of getting a periodic newsletter from the cemetary asking for money. On the one hand, they apparently do have some significant extra expenses, but on the other, I doubt that any of the folks who paid to be buried there thought their kids and grandkids (and greatgrandkids) would be taking on a continuing expense to prevent mom&dad’s headstone from washing down the hill into the storm drains…
Sometimes I think the old european system is better.
I’m still quite young, but I’ve actually thought about this. Regardless, my body is going to the Body Farm in Tennessee for anthropological study.
OOoooOOOooOo - I wonder if they would put me out to pasture with a Patricia Cornwell novel clutched in my hands?
The book “Stiff” by Mary Roach describes a number of alternative things one can do with one’s body. I am wavering between donating my body to science and being turned into fertilizer for a tree.
The pacific ocean, off the Oregon coast; it’s where everyone in my family goes.
My personal plan was the have my body left in a park with a suicide note clutched in my fingers:
“Having despaired of the world I have decided to kill myself using only natural causes.”
I think that sitting on The Other Side and watching the police, attorneys and coroner argue for three weeks would be fun.
Burn me the cheapest way possible, split the ashes into numerous ziplocks for friends and family. Have them sprinkle my ashes in various places around the world when they travel
Salem, I am so sorry that you lost your daughter.
my aunt has requested that we play the wedding march at her funeral since it will be the only time she will be going down the aisle
Aside from life insurance so no-one has to deal with my debts, and making sure my organ donor card is filled out, I really don’t care what happens to my body. I have suggested throwing it in a burlap sack and planting a tree over it.
Ravaj, per request we all sang “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” at my beloved gram’s burial in May, and had a large party at her house, decorated with all of her Christmas decorations. It was that or “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead”- she was long lovingly referred to as a witch an collected dozens of them.
My mom and I do genealogy together- she bought me cemetery plots for my family in Gram’s cemetery years ago for Christmas. Won a local newspaper’s contest of “Strangest Gift Ever” one year with THAT entry!
Salem, my heart goes out to you and your family…
My parents buried my younger sister this past year. Her death occurred unexpectedly right before Xmas last year and I’ve tried to help them all I can- but I think losing a child and the aftermath must be the single most difficult event a person can endure. May many happy memories replace the pain…
My mom said that she wants us to have a wake for her on the shores of Lake Superior. (It’s a Yooper thing.) However, she’s not convinced we’ll do it right, so we have to have a practice wake first so she can supervise. I suspect it’s simply an excuse to have a good rollicking party on the shores to Da Lake, eh?
I haven’t made any written wishes, though I’ve discussed it with my parents and my boyfriend. I want my organs donated. I thought of donating my body to science until a doctor friend of mine stressed that donating the organs is much more important and does much more good. If they have to cremate the rest then so be it, although I’d really rather have the rest buried in a burlap sack with a tree planted on it. I won’t be using it; it might as well return to nature as fast as possible.
Ever since I read “Speaker for the Dead” I kind of wanted my death spoken. Otherwise, though, I’d just like people to get together and remember me, tell stories.
This weekend I went to a memorial service that was just like that. People read poems and pieces that reminded them of the deceased, and told stories, laughed and cried. I think that’s the best way.
Gawd. That pisses me off.
What’s a more secure, steady investment than funeral services? You’ll never be lacking in clients. But that’s not enough for those kinds of greedy bastards. They want to get rich quick on little to no work and they don’t care who gets hurt in the process.
i’ve been an industry insider (mortuary science college graduate, funeral director) long enough to know more than a few things about the industry. my grandparents ran their own funeral home for over thirty years; but it was a “mom-n-pop” funeral home; my grandfather once said that if you hurt your reputation you might as well close the doors, because it’s over. the days of the “mom-n-pop’s” are long gone. enter the giant corporate monoliths; SCI, Stewart Corp., etc. i have experience at the former. they are so brazen, they will push for pre-need sales within days of a family losing a loved one. it’s completely unconscionable what they do. so, by design i hope to become the most hated man in the funeral industry, you can see why over @ www.guardianoffunds.com . it’s time someone went on a crusade to fight back against this type of thing.
so, ladies and gentlemen, i have mounted my horse…