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What You Need to Know Before You Go, and How FCA Can Help

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  • Trying to plan a funeral or cremation, but don't know where to start or how to make sure it's affordable? We've got 29 free articles packed with tips! And if you find our work valuable, please help us keep it going.  FCA is the only nonprofit charity protecting the rights (and the wallets) bereaved consumers nationwide. Your tax-deductible gifts are what keep this service alive for you, your friends and neighbors, and for all grieving families. Help us help you by becoming a Friend of FCA today! Members receive a free Before I Go funeral planning kit, our national newsletter, special consumer alerts, and more!
  • Copy_of_BigCoverJust $12 Get it all together in one place with our Before I Go, You Should Know © funeral planning kit. Each kit comes with a 16-page fill-in booklet for your final wishes, plus Advance Directives specific to your state. If you're wondering how to talk to your family about your funeral plans, this kit will help. With hundreds of thousands in print, we've seen first-hand how careful planning and candid family talk can make a tough time more manageable, and less expensive.
Last Updated ( Monday, 12 April 2010 20:46 )
 

National Home Funeral Alliance Conference October 8-10

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Advocates for families' rights to conduct undertaker-free funerals are gathering in Boulder, Colorado October 8-10, 2010 for the second annual conference of the National Home Funeral Alliance. Online registration is here.  For full program details, go here.

Consumer choice in funerals starts with the right to choose not to be a consumer at all, but to organize and perform a funeral privately with family and friends. This is the conference to attend for anyone interested in the cutting edge of consumer advocacy in funeral matters!

This year's theme is Building Bridges to Bring Death Care Back Home, and the speakers's roster is chock full of leaders from the home funeral movement as well as national consumer advocates (including FCA's Executive Director, Josh Slocum):

... and more.

 

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 31 August 2010 13:35 )
 

Wall Street Journal on the Undertakers vs. the Monks

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8/27/2010— The Wall Street Journal has an excellent piece on the Louisiana Funeral Board's embarrassing crusade to put the Benedictine Monks out of the casket business. Some LA undertakers offered some choice quotes:

"They're cutting into our profit," says Leonard Dunn, the owner of Serenity Funeral Home, located a short drive from the abbey. He adds. "I don't think the monks are actually making the caskets—I think it's a marketing gimmick."
Boyd Mothe Jr., a member of the fifth generation of his family to run Mothe Funeral Homes outside New Orleans, says Louisiana's law should remain on the books because licensed directors have the training to sell caskets—transactions he calls "complicated." For instance, he says, "a quarter of America is oversized. I don't even know if the monks know how to make an oversized casket."
Some in the industry complain that Funeral Consumers Alliance unfairly smears the industry's reputation. We don't need to, since funeral directors are doing such a competent job themselves.

 

Louisiana goes after monastery for selling coffins; monks sue

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8.11.2010—A sense of shame or proportion didn't stop the Lousiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors from targeting a monastery, but perhaps a lawsuit from the Institute for Justice will. After the state board tried to levy fines against the St. Joseph Abbey for building and selling coffins without having a funeral director's license, IJ has taken up the monks' cause.

Fox8 ran a story from the Associated Press:

The monks of St. Joseph Abbey in St. Tammany Parish sued Louisiana regulators Thursday, charging the Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors is attempting to maintain a casket cartel through regulation dominated by the funeral industry.

The regulators told the monks not to sell the caskets because
they are not licensed funeral directors.

The 36 monks of the 121-year-old abbey decided a few years ago
to sell caskets with simple white cloth interiors for $1,500 to
$2,000 to support the abbey, which does not receive funding from
the Roman Catholic Church.

About 50 to 60 of the caskets were sold, beginning in 2007,
before the funeral board, acting on a complaint filed by a funeral
home, subpoenaed the order in March and threatened fines, said
lawyer Jeff Rowes of the Arlington, Va.-based Institute for
Justice. The monks tried to get an exemption from the regulations
in 2008 and 2010, but legislators rejected the requests.

Rowes said there is no justification for a state "to regulate
the sale of wooden boxes."

Getting a funeral director's license is no small task. State law
requires at 30 semester hours of college and a one-year
apprenticeship during which the candidate must preside over at
least 25 funerals. A funeral home license requires embalming by a
licensed embalmer. The abbey does not intend to offer that service,
Rowes said.

Abbot Justin Brown said making and selling caskets is in keeping
with a 1,500-year tradition of self-support. "For centuries,
Benedictine monks have been entrepreneurs," he said.

The monks of St. Joseph Abbey for years farmed and harvested
wood, a business that sustained heavy damage from Hurricane Katrina
in August 2005, Brown said. The caskets drew public attention at
funerals for monks and two Louisiana bishops, leading to requests
to purchase them. In 2007, the monks converted part of the abbey
into a woodworking shop. Three monks usually work on the caskets.

"All we want to do is sell these simple wood caskets to our
friends and the public," Brown said.

Lousiana—one of only three states that allow only licensed funeral directors to sell caskets—has a sordid history of protecting the entrenched funeral industry from competition at the expense of funeral consumers. See here for earlier posts on LA regulators working to protect the funeral industry from the public.

 

Last Updated ( Friday, 20 August 2010 16:06 )
 

Post-Conference Wrap-up 2010

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FCA's 2010 Conference was a hit! Author Robert Fulghum brought the house down, four prominent advocates introduced attendees to family-directed, undertaker-free funerals, and FCA's first-ever live fundraiser brought in $4,500 in donations from our generous members.

If you missed the conference, here's the next best thing. We've got audio recordings and handouts from presenters available for download below. If you don't see the recording or handout you're looking for, that means we don't have it; thank you for understanding.

Special thanks to Jim Null of the FCA of Western North Carolina for photographing our conference, and recording several presentations. You rock, Jim!

 

 

Last Updated ( Thursday, 19 August 2010 14:28 )
 
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Welcome to our new website. We've overhauled it to make it easier for you to find the practical information you need to make informed funeral choices and get answers to the most common questions about funeral choices and costs. Leave us a comment on our forum and let us know what you like, what you don't, and how we can improve it!

About FCA

The Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) is a Federation of Nonprofit Consumer Information Societies protecting a consumer's right to choose a meaningful, dignified, affordable funeral since 1963.