How To Arrange A Simple Burial

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DIRECT CREMATION SERVICES

Within the past few years a new and useful service has appeared in many areas, through which a body may be removed and cremated immediately after death, without embalming, and at low cost. Some organizations offering this service call themselves "societies," ap. parently In an effort to capitalize on the goodwill of memorial societies. This is not accurate; all the ones we know are commercial ventures and should be described as services. Some are operated by mortuaries. Some of the more substantial ones have contracts and agreements with memorial societies. Most of those who do not have connections with a memorial society charge rates above those available through memorial societies. You can quickly find out about this by contacting your local memorial society and comparing costs and services.

LEGAL AND LEGISLATIVE PROBLEMS

State and provincial burial laws are intended to protect public health and safety, to make sure that foul play was not involved in a death, and to ensure that the body is disposed of in a responsible and sanitary manner. State boards of health and various regulatory commissions are empowered to set rules and procedures for such things as licensing of funeral directors, death certificates, transportation permits, and authorizations to cremate. These laws and regulations vary in different states and provinces.

The funeral directors, like other industrial groups, maintain active lobbies in nearly all state and provincial capitals. In addition, the various state boards regulating the funeral industry are composed — with few exceptions — entirely of funeral directors. In some states these boards even hold their meetings in conjunction with the state meetings of the funeral directors organizations.

It is important in the funeral industry, as in other industries, that the state regulatory bodies contain a majority of non-industry representatives and that their procedures provide for full presentation of the consumer point of view.

Funeral directors' organizations are often able to put through laws whose ostensible aim is to protect the public interest but which really promote the interests of the industry at the expense of the public. For instance, morticians in Florida tried to get a law enacted which would make embalming compulsory. Failing that, they did get a law passed which requires embalming if a body is held more than 24 hours. A year or so later they got another law passed "in the interest of public safety" requiring that a body not be cremated in less than 48 hours. A similar subterfuge is occasionally attempted in other states to make embalming compulsory.

Funeral directors' organizations have opposed laws requiring that their charges be itemized, though one of their magazines, Casket & Sunnyside, commented that such laws only compel what should be done voluntarily. Some funeral directors do itemize their bills even when not required to do so by law.

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