37-36 61st Str, Woodside, NY 11377
What it costs
The bill usually arrives before the money does. This is how families bridge that gap, who the funeral home can actually look to for payment, and what happens when there is genuinely nothing to pay with.
Nearly every funeral is eventually paid for out of what the person left. Hardly any is paid for out of it on the day. A bank freezes an account when it learns of a death, probate takes months where there is any at all, and the funeral happens in the first week. That gap is the practical problem, and it catches families who are not short of money in the slightest.
The usual bridge is a life insurance policy. Most insurers will allow one to be assigned: the claim is paid to the funeral home directly, up to the amount of the bill, and whatever is left goes to the beneficiary as it would have done anyway. A family then does not have to find the money and wait to be repaid. Whether an insurer will do it, and how quickly, varies enormously — so bring the policy to the arrangement meeting rather than mentioning it afterwards. That is the difference between assigning a policy and lending your own money to an estate.
Where there is no policy, somebody usually pays and reclaims from the estate later. Whoever that is should keep every receipt, and should get advice from somebody qualified to give it about how funeral expenses rank against everything else the estate owes. We will not guess at that, and you should be wary of any funeral director who does.
Whose name is on it
New York does not leave this to whoever gets there first. There is an order, it is written down, and it decides who signs — which occasionally means the person making the arrangements is not the person paying for them.
The person who signs the authorisation is the person a funeral home can look to for the bill, and that is not always the next of kin and not always the person who inherits. Read whose name is going on the paperwork before it is signed, and if the money is coming from somewhere else, say so at the table rather than afterwards.
Deciding and paying are two different roles and they often sit with two different people. A son signs, a daughter pays, the estate reimburses one of them months later. None of that is a problem as long as everybody at the table knows which of the two they are doing, and the paperwork says the same thing the family thinks it says.
The order of who may decide is set by the state rather than by the funeral home, and it begins with anyone the person appointed in writing. It is worth knowing where you sit in it before the meeting rather than during it.
The order New York sets, and what happens when a family disagrees
Contributions, not solutions
Two of these are contributions towards a funeral rather than a way of paying for one, and the site says so rather than letting a family plan around them. A great deal of it goes unclaimed anyway, simply because nobody knew to ask.
The Social Security Administration
A one-time lump-sum payment may be due to a surviving spouse who was living with the person, or in some cases to a child. It is a small fixed amount and it has not changed in a very long time. We report the death; the claim is yours to make, and the office will tell you the current figure and whether you qualify.
Survivors' benefits are a different and much larger question, and they are that office's to answer and not ours.
The Department of Veterans Affairs
A veteran discharged under conditions other than dishonourable may be entitled to burial in a national cemetery at no cost to the family, a government headstone or marker, a burial flag, and a memorial certificate. There may also be an allowance towards the funeral, which differs depending on whether the death was connected to service.
All of it starts with the discharge papers. Find them before anything else — see the veterans' page.
The insurer
A policy can usually be assigned to pay the funeral home directly, which means a family does not have to find the money and wait for the claim. Whether an insurer will do it, and how quickly, varies enormously.
We will not tell you a policy is worth more or less than it is, and we do not sell insurance.
The federal death payment is a small fixed amount and has been for a very long time. A veteran's allowance depends on whether the death was connected to service. Neither is designed to pay for a funeral and neither will. What they do is reduce what a family has to find — and a veteran's other entitlements, a grave that costs nothing and is cared for permanently, a headstone, a flag, can change the arithmetic a great deal more than the allowance does.
Say so on the first telephone call. Not at the end of the meeting and not after a casket has been looked at: at the start, in plain words. It changes what we show you and it changes nothing about how you are treated.
It costs a fraction of the other shapes, and we are required to offer it, and we would rather you heard that from us than found it out afterwards. It also asks nothing of a family in the week when they have the least to give. Both of those are real.
A direct cremation is the least expensive arrangement there is, by a wide margin, and every funeral home has to offer one. Nothing about choosing it is a lesser funeral: you can hold a memorial afterwards, anywhere, at any time, for nothing at all if a hall or a garden will do.
Below that there is still something. Where somebody dies in this city and there is genuinely nobody able to pay for a burial or a cremation, the city has a process for it. It is not quick and it is not generous, and it is a great deal better than a family borrowing money it cannot repay in the worst week of its life. Ask us and we will tell you what it is and where it starts.
Asking is not shameful and it is not rare. One of us keeps a list of what is available near here for people who are struggling, and that list exists because it is needed.
Say it on the first call, before anything else. Nothing on that call commits you to anything, and it is a great deal easier to say at the beginning than at the end.