Funeral Service Law

04/15/2026

It was an interesting, and some times spirited, Senate Oversight Hearing on the FTC.

04/15/2026

Had a great meeting with the FTC yesterday. We appreciate their openness and willingness to work together to make sure consumers are protected and the realities of complying with the Funeral Rule by funeral service professionals are considered. National Funeral Directors Association

01/28/2026

🚨 Legal Update: Recommendations for Employers Regarding ICE Enforcement Actions

🔗 Learn more: https://nfda.org/news/in-the-news/nfda-news/id/9958

10/07/2024

02/08/2024

https://nfda.org/news/in-the-news/nfda-news/id/8356

On Monday, NFDA shared information about a disappointing article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal titled “How the Funeral Industry Got the FTC to Hide Bad Actors.” On your behalf, NFDA has submitted a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal pointing out the missed opportu

06/05/2023

A Texas family uses AirTag to help track down thieves after $62K worth of memorial vases stolen from gravesites.

Hundreds of gravesites in were robbed of tens of thousands of dollars worth of bronze vases. The suspects intended to sell the sentimental items as scrap metal. Before that could happen, officials say some of the loved ones affected took matters into their own hands and helped police find three of the suspected culprits.

“It is very frustrating having to do this over and over again,” said Tony Velazquez, who recently found out his uncle’s grave at the Restwood Memorial Park in Clute, TX, had been robbed. He says this isn’t the first time.

“In December, we bought another one for my uncle because that was the first time that it was stolen,” he said. What the thieves didn’t know is that an Apple AirTag was attached to that vase and would help investigators track it. “They gave us the login information and allowed us to then track it. We tracked it to a residence right outside of the town of Brazoria,” said Clute Police Chief James Fitch and they were able to arrest the suspects believed to be responsible for stealing 102 vases over the past two months.

“These things run about 600 bucks a piece, so we’re talking $62,000 worth,” Fitch said. “They had actually tried to take the entire vases to a scrap yard, they turned them down luckily,” Fitch said.

If convicted, all could be forced to pay restitution. Velazquez and his family are now out $1,200 and say they want the cemetery to help prevent thefts from happening again. “Overnight security, maybe. Maybe some light posts around here,” Velazquez said.

Restwood Funeral Home and Memorial Park officials said in a statement: “Unfortunately, the theft of bronze vases is an issue at cemeteries across North America. It saddens us that thieves are preying on cemeteries and gravesites to commit these crimes. However, cemeteries, by their nature, are open to the public."

https:// tinyurl.com/4bnbu

01/14/2023

The staff at a central Iowa funeral home was surprised when a woman who was believed to be dead, turned out to be alive.

10/24/2022

Archaeologists in northern Germany unearth 10,000 year-old cremated remains at a Mesolithic campsite that was used for spearing fish and roasting hazelnuts.

https://www.livescience.com/stone-age-bog-bones-germany

10/02/2022

A year and two months after his wife died, Ralph Waldo Emerson opened her tomb.

Emerson had been visiting Ellen’s grave daily since she’d succumbed to tuberculosis, just two years into what had been a happy, golden marriage.

But on a gray day in March 1832, Emerson decided to not only talk to Ellen as he typically did, but to look at her dead and decaying body.

Normally a prodigious journaler, the entry Emerson made for that day was unusually terse: “I visited Ellen’s tomb & opened the coffin.”

While we don’t know what Emerson experienced as he looked into the vault where his wife lay, we can surmise the effect this act had on his life. Within months, he’d resigned his prestigious position as minister of Boston’s Second Church — a vocation he’d felt increasingly unsuited for — and left for a year-long trip to Europe. By the fall of 1833, he’d given the first of the 1,500 lectures for which he’d become renowned. Two years after that, he would be married again.

However macabre it may seem, looking into Ellen’s tomb helped Emerson accept the reality of her death — helped free him to move forward with his life.

Whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the regret of an ill-made decision, or a set of irreversible circumstances, you may also be haunted by people or possibilities you cognitively know are gone but viscerally feel are still alive.

A life lived too intimately with these ghosts, is a life lived in limbo.

While you needn’t seek release in the same dramatic fashion Emerson did, you do need to face the awful finality of things head on.

She’s not coming back. You can’t have kids. You pursued the wrong profession.

Grieve the future you’d dreamed of; lay a flower on its grave; begin to build another.

09/02/2022