Irrevocable plans can almost always be transferred from one funeral home to another, but few morticians will offer this information. When Mrs. H. moved in, the nursing home insisted that funeral arrangements be made without delay. Her daughter—without any consultation—arranged for a $4,000-plus funeral at the only funeral home in town, written up in an irrevocable funeral contract and paid for from Mrs. H.’s own checking account. It had been difficult for Mrs. H. to manage her affairs—arthritis had taken away her sense of independence and control, and she’d depended on her daughter to write her checks, among other things. But she knew that the $4,000 funeral was not to her liking. With the help of a Senior Law Project attorney, she was able to transfer her “irrevocable” funeral plan to another funeral home. After writing up an irrevocable agreement for a $695 cremation, the new funeral director instructed the bank to refund the difference.

In short, an “irrevocable” trust does not require you to give up all rights to control your investment. If a funeral director attempts to take undue advantage of your situation, you may have legal recourse.

In most cases, shielding assets in order to qualify for government benefits is the only sound reason for paying for a funeral in advance. The only way to do that is with an irrevocable trust. But keep in mind that even though your trust account is irrevocable, you will be responsible for declaring the interest income because it will ultimately be used for your benefit. Mrs. M., in South Carolina, was irate: “The funeral home sent me a statement showing how much interest I’m supposed to declare on my income tax return. I don’t have that money anymore, and when I die the funeral home will get it all. Why should I have to pay taxes?”

20. NEW HOPE FOR THE DEAD

At the June 1996 Nashville gathering of nonprofit funeral and memorial societies, Lisa Carlson—the executive director of the Funeral and Memorial Societies of America (FAMSA)—issued a call for social activism:

The following year—with the cooperation of other consumer groups including AARP and the Consumer Federation of America—FAMSA petitioned the FTC to reopen the Funeral Rule for new amendments. Key objectives will be: to outlaw the nondeclinable fee, to legitimize private viewing of unembalmed bodies, to specify costs in connection with body donation, and to bring cemeteries under the coverage of the Funeral Rule. The situation will demand close attention from consumers, given the predictable response from the industry—which is happy, indeed, with the rule as it stands.

Who are these meddlesome do-gooders willing to take on a well-heeled and powerful industry? “Unitarians, Quakers, eggheads, and old farts who are nothing more than a middleman for the industry and a cheap funeral,” was one glib characterization. Carlson cheerfully acknowledged that she qualifies for “at least three of those four.”

The practice of group planning for funeral arrangements started early in the century in the Farm Grange organization in the Northwestern United States. From there the idea spread to the cities, mainly under church leadership. The People’s Memorial Association of Seattle, organized in 1939 by a Unitarian minister, was the first urban group. Organizations spread gradually along the coast, then eastward across the United States, and again northward into Canada. Vancouver boasts the largest such society today, with over 100,000 members.

By 1963 the societies had become a continent-wide movement, and the Cooperative League of the USA called a meeting in Chicago, where Canadian and American societies together formed the Continental Association of Funeral and Memorial Societies. Canadian societies later dropped out, and the name was changed to the “Funeral and Memorial Societies of America” in 1996.

Funeral planning and memorial societies generated public pressure that resulted in the 1984 Funeral Rule. But once members were convinced that consumers had what they needed, social activism waned. Only a few of the societies continued to conduct annual price surveys of area mortuaries. Many had negotiated discounts for members with cooperating establishments; as a cooperative buyer’s club they had been very successful, and their memberships grew without fanfare. Smaller societies, staffed by volunteers, were still struggling; others went out of existence altogether.

John Blake, who lived in Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, knew nothing about memorial societies in 1986. That year, when his mother died in Bremerton, Washington, Blake flew out to arrange for her cremation. “The funeral director was going to burn a $150 box,” Blake said. “My mother won’t get into that,” he told the funeral director with a chuckle. “She was a very frugal woman.” So Blake and his son-in-law and two grandchildren built “a nice little box” with $20 worth of lumber. Only after her death did they discover that she had been a member of the People’s Memorial Association. Had they known, the cost would have been even less.

Blake soon became involved in the Wisconsin societies. But the personal satisfaction of family participation remained a strong force in his life. When Lisa Carlson’s Caring for Your Own Deadwas published the next year, he felt that disseminating it through the societies was a matter of importance. It was on his urging that Carlson became involved in the society movement.

A new option had become available—handling all funeral arrangements without an undertaker, as had been the custom a century ago. The first edition of Caring for Your Own Deadsold 10,000 copies.

Karen Leonard—seduced into casket sales for the “fun” of it—soon found herself the director of the Redwood Funeral Society in Northern California. Taking a page from the funeral industry’s own indispensable Grief Therapy mantra, she perceived the therapeutic benefits of caring for one’s own dead. Jerri Lyons and others, with Leonard’s support, started the Natural Death Care Project in 1996. They assisted families in handling nearly fifty deaths the very first year. Members from their group expect to establish similar projects in other states.

The option of caring for your own dead, if it takes hold, will mark a break with the trend towards ever-more-costly and -mechanically impersonal journeys to the grave. Which direction will the American public choose? On the one hand, there can be a return to funerals in the true American tradition, where friends and family do everything necessary without the intervention of so-called professionals; or, on the other, a further abdication of personal responsibility, where we accept the best and most costly merchandise the trade has to offer, not excluding absurdities such as Batesville’s Burping Casket. [26]

On the East Coast, after months of persistence by Byron Blanchard of the Boston-based Memorial Society, the Public Health Department conceded, in the summer of 1996, that consumers had a legal right to care for their own dead. A regulation promulgated by the Funeral Board—requiring a funeral director to obtain the disposition permit—had been declared illegal in 1909 but had nonetheless remained on the books.