Dying isn’t free. The family can’t just throw your carcass in a dumpster. There are laws to follow and it costs money to follow them. Hell, even renting a boat to haul you out to sea costs money- and concrete blocks are $4 each!

I was writing an application last year for who eventually became my biggest customer. While in the middle of the app, her son called her. He had just left a memorial service at a funeral home and told her the tab was $14k. She said to me, "Let's increase that face amount." LOL.

You are applying logic to a situation that defies logic. Many people honestly want a lot of money spent on a fancy funeral, expensive casket, and large headstone. I too don't understand, but that is my point of view and others see it as a final extravagance.

In most states the funeral directors have lobbied the state legislatures to make funerals more expensive than needed. Laws that demand a concrete vault, then the casket and buried 6 feet under and only after an expensive embalming are common.

Only a few states let people be buried in a gunny sack, and have a tree planted on top. Even a cremation is thousands of dollars and has all sorts of restrictions.

A few years back an acquaintance of mine had his mom pass away.

She had nothing. He had nothing. Couldn't afford a cremation. He was in a complete panic. I paid for her cremation. The funeral home felt sorry for him and only charged a $1000.

The only alternative is to never claim the body, and allow the local government cremate them and bury them. It is also possible to donate a body to "Science" and have it used by medical students to learn anatomy or other medical research. That really has to be taken care ahead of time and lots consent forms signed as I understand.

Yes sir, one thing people don't think about is the fact that land , as there is less will become more valuable and at some point ( already happening in a few places and probably more) that they will start removing Graves from cemeteries rezoning them and build on them.

I told my wife that any med school would be happy to have my body with all of it's new additions....pace maker, chemo port, Gunther Tulip vena filter, and a new prototype Navilyst mesh pelvis (after being shattered in a n accident by a drunk driver.

It's quite creepy. In lots of places in Europe a body is buried in the town's cemetery for ten years, then dug up - and something happens to it http://forums.pelicanparts.com/suppo...s/pukeface.gif , and the plot is resold to the next "client".

it's strongly suggesting no one cares after ten years.

You mean like Poltergeist? :)

IIRC the problem in Poltergeist was that they didn't remove the graves/bodies. They just removed the headstones.

Good point

Most of what I dealt with today was trying to unwind the messes these people had made for themselves. The one deal I wrote, I was able to combine two existing policies into one for a modest monthly savings and get her about $1400 cash back. One I really should have been able to help (but you just can't fix stupid), the woman had bought a policy through State Farm 30 yrs. ago and leveraged it to the hilt. Her loan against her cash value was $11k and she wasn't even paying enough to make a dent in the interest. She was only 57 and in perfect health, so she would have been so much better off cashing out, letting me replace that policy and starting all over. She'd spend less per month for more coverage, plus get back whatever cash value was left and not have to worry about her interest eating up what was left of the other policy. She's gonna think about it. She lived in a pretty rough trailer park with her kids and grandkids. Not much upward mobility in that family.

In many places there's shortage of grave space on most cemeteries.
growing population means growng requirements for grave sites Not everybody wants to be cremated.
I doubt they will rezone those, empty out old graves to make space for new graves seems more realistic

technically, they can just do nothing
your inheritance covers it
if nothing left, it's for the state to dispose of your carcass, that's why we pay taxes

Your family can't be forced to inherit debt

at least not here, but I doubt it's different for the US or any other civilized country

The only thing that costs money, is the emotional part, the idea that we like to be sent off in some form of nice ritual for those who remain behind to grieve.
That's just bling for the emo/ego.

Anybody religious is mostly so because they cant imagine the part where the ego ceases to be.
So that funeral bling, feeds into that insecurity.

Easiest marketing to get a sale from

Rick Lee,
Thank you for sharing your experience showing how/why people remains poor.

Years ago my mother had to pay for my brother's burial out of her pocket since he died broke and did not have life insurance. My father was fuming!

The tide turned a while ago on burials. Many people today are choosing cremation and if the traditional cemeteries don't have an endowment for upkeep it is going to be a big problem because their income stream is drying up. A lot of them have opened up strip mall crematory store fronts to try and enter that market. It is still a minimum of around $1,000 for a simple no service cremation. A lot of $'s for this population.

In Europe with a LONG history, yea I can imagine cemetery space is limited. England for sure has that problem. Military cemeteries are tight on space all over unfortunately.

Oklahoma became a state in 1907. Oklahoma City did not exist until April 22, 1889. No cemeteries here until after that date. The few Indian burial sites were just ignored I suspect.

And yea, if the family does not claim the body for burial the government will take care of it. It is really easy to spend 25 grand or more on a funeral. It makes no sense to me, but as long as I don't have to pay for it, and it is not a taxpayer funded funeral, spend what ya want.

You would be amazed at the number of bodies that come through my office that are "unclaimed", because families cant afford burials. The bodies end up having a county burial in a potters field. Here in NJ, unclaimed bodies cannot be cremated. They have to be interned whole.


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Many states have laws that once a cemetery is established the bodies can only be removed with the families permission. If they can't find the family, the bodies are not to be moved.

At Maxwell AFB off the end of one of the runways is a small 10 plot cemetery that had dates back into the late 1700s and early 1800s. It had a 1 foot tall fence and was not really maintained except to keep trees from growing in it. We asked about it and were told it was a slave grave, but who really knows. All the kids on bikes knew where it was and it was so close to the end of the runway it was a off limits area, but kids are invincible and no base cop was going to chase after us as we knew the trails in the area really well.

seems like most of these folks would be better off with Term Insurance