Preneed: What happens to "legacy" funerals?

I suppose this comment comes at least 10 years ahead of its time. Hopefully the archive of this site will last long enough for me to say, "See!! I wrote about this first!"

Anyway, I just finished reading a finely detailed article by Alan Creedy as published in the latest Director magazine (the monthly publication of the National Funeral Directors Association). Alan spells out "typical" scenarios for preneed and how much value a funeral home can retain by keeping an active preneed program going. [Do keep in mind however that he has zero incentive to tell you anything but the most rosy picture about preneed. He has no business and no financial future should funeral directors head in another direction. This also applies to the hundreds of companies large and small who provide some sort of preneed services to funeral directors. THEY get their money up front--did you EVER notice that? We have to figure out how to administer these files and contracts and run these funerals, not them.]

To the next generation of funeral directors, I would pose this question. What happens when we don't want to run "traditional" funerals any longer? Not run traditional funerals, impossible you might say to yourself. We have served families in a certain way for 3 or 4 or 6 generations. This will continue!!!

Perhaps for some of you it will continue long enough to retire another generation but for many, a time will come when we regret having all those traditional funerals on the books. Some state laws and regulations REQUIRE you to provide the funeral specified. What happens if you can't or won't because you've stopped keeping the staff and equipment (particularly livery) around to service those kinds of funerals?

We and our predecessors have made promises we may not want to keep five, ten, fifteen years down the road. Our businesses and our business models will need to change dramatically in the years ahead to keep pace with the transformation of our society and its real consumer needs. Preneed (particularly in highly regulated states) could easily become an albatross keeping us from moving forward, moving on to meet future consumer need.

Comments

[Bob Smith]

BT
Good thoughts. Also what happens when the survivors no longer want a "traditional " funeral that has been prearranged. I have had instances where the survivors didn't want to have a visitation. The money was not an issue. They just didn't want what was prearranged.
It is interesting what other business/serivce do you pre arrange and pre pay for years in advance.
Bob Smith
Smith-Corcoran Funeral Homes

[BT]

Preneed "worked" just fine as a little side-line to meet a few people's needs and then to cover medicaid issues. Large scale pre-need however creates all kinds of liabilities and financial risk that were never part of owning a funeral home in the past. We who have 20 or more years until retirement will have our hands full administering and managing our way through all these obligations.

BT