What it costs
The one fee you cannot decline
Every other item on a funeral home's price list is yours to refuse. This one is not, and a family that knows why is in a much better position to read the rest of the list.
What the item actually is
Basic services of the funeral director and staff
The overhead: being reachable at night, the arranging, the filings, the permits, the coordination. This is the one you cannot decline.
It sits at the top of every general price list, under that same name at every funeral home, and it is charged once whatever you choose. Burial or cremation, a full service or none at all: the figure does not move, because the work behind it does not.
It is not a charge for the funeral. It is the charge for the funeral home — the part of the business that has to exist, and be staffed, before anybody rings. That part does not become cheaper because a family has chosen the simplest arrangement on the page.
What it pays for
Somebody awake, the filings nothing can happen without, and a building that has to be there
Roughly three things, and none of them is optional for the funeral home whatever the family chooses.
The filings, and the chasing
These happen for every arrangement, in this order, and the funeral waits on all of them. It is the part of the work families never see, because when it is done properly there is nothing to see.
Registering the death
We file the death certificate with the city, electronically, once the medical part is signed. This is the step everything else waits on.
The burial or cremation permit
Nothing can be buried or cremated without it. It follows the registration, so a delay in the certification is a delay in the funeral, which is why we chase the certifying doctor rather than waiting.
Certified copies of the death certificate
These are what banks, insurers and everybody else will ask for. How many you need is a question with a real answer, and it has its own page.
Notifying the federal government
We report the death to the Social Security Administration as a matter of course. That stops the payments, which matters, because money paid after a death has to be given back.
Claiming what the family is entitled to
Veterans' entitlements, the Social Security death payment, and any insurance policy the family knows about. We fill the forms in with you; the decisions belong to those offices.
The hour of the night, and the building
The telephone is answered at every hour of every day, including the middle of the night and including holidays, because that is when most of these calls are made. Somebody has to be awake, and somebody else has to be able to go out.
Then there are the rooms, which have to exist, be heated and be kept whether or not anybody uses them this week:
- The chapel
- The reposing rooms
- The reception room
- The arrangement room
- The family room
- The covered porch
And the records. Every arrangement leaves paper behind that has to be findable years later, when a family rings about a grave, a copy of a certificate, or what was decided the last time somebody died.
Why you cannot decline it, and why everything else is different
You may decline any other item on the list. Any of them: the viewing, the embalming, the cars, the casket we sell, the rooms here. A funeral home may not refuse to sell you the rest because you declined something, and it may not make you buy a package to get one item inside it.
This one is the exception because it is not an item you choose. It is the work that sits under all the items — and if it were declinable, a funeral home would simply have to bury it inside the other prices, which is exactly what printing it on its own line prevents. On a line of its own it is a figure you can compare. Spread across everything else, it would be a figure nobody could see.
Everything in writing, before anything is agreed
The itemised statement is given to you and gone through in front of you before you sign, and you keep a copy.
Cash advances are passed on at what they cost
Flowers, notices, clergy, musicians, certified copies, the cemetery and the crematory. We add nothing.
You may decline any item but one
Every item on the list is optional except the basic services of the funeral director and staff, and we will tell you which one that is and why.
The uncomfortable part
A low fee here can mean a high everything else
It is a real pattern, it is not against any rule, and it is the reason this figure is worth asking for and not worth comparing on its own.
A funeral home can print a modest basic services fee and make the difference back on the casket, on the rooms, on the cars, or on what it adds to money it pays out on your behalf. Another can print a higher one and add nothing anywhere else. Compared on that number alone, the first looks cheaper and may not be.
So ask for the fee, and then ask for one whole arrangement priced end to end. The simplest arrangement on the list is the cleanest comparison, because it has the fewest places for anything to sit. A fee on its own tells you considerably less than a fee and a complete arrangement together.
Comparing only the basic services fee is one of the easier ways to choose the more expensive funeral home. Ask for that figure and for one complete arrangement, and compare the pair.
Cash advances
Moderate, and easy to misread
Flowers, notices, the clergy or celebrant, musicians, certified copies, the cemetery's and the crematory's fees. We pay these out for you and put them on the bill. Ask any funeral home whether it adds anything to them; we do not, and it is a fair question to ask everybody.
Ask what ours is, then ask everybody else's
It is a fair question, it has a short answer, and you can ask it on the telephone without giving your name or explaining anything.