Funeral Consumers Alliance

Hey Carolyn: Sorry you're confused. I'll try to be clearer. Had the man started checking into the legality of doing what he wanted to do, before his father died, he would have encountered the problems then instead of after death when the clock is ticking. He then could have gone up the chain of command from O'Meara, and if unsuccessful, taken the issue to the newspaper to put pressure on the bureaucrats so that the matter would have been resolved before he actually needed to get the permit. In my case, when a local selectboard shut down a home burial I was helping a family with, I had no time to try to resolve the issue before the funeral. Had the family done some legwork before the death, they would have encountered the opposition from the town, and would have had time for a legal challenge of the system. Once a death occurs, families tend to have less resolve about dealing with these types of problems, than they would if it were encountered in the preplanning phase.