Q. What exactly is a home funeral?
A. A home funeral happens when a loved one is cared for at home or in prepared space after death, giving family and friends time to gather and participate in:
- keeping the body cool with noninvasive techniques, such as ice
- filing the death certificate and obtaining transport and burial permits
- transporting the deceased to the place of burial or cremation
- facilitating the final disposition, such as digging the grave in a natural burial
- preparing the body for burial or cremation by bathing, dressing and laying out for visitation
- hiring professionals for specific products or services
- planning and carrying out after-death rituals or ceremonies
Q. Are home funerals legal?
A. Yes. In every state and province, it is legal for families to bring or keep their loved one home until time of disposition. In ten states, a funeral director may need to be involved in some capacity, but this does not hinder the ability to have a home funeral.
Q. Are home funerals safe?
A. Yes. Dead bodies do not pose an increased health risk any more than when they were alive. With appropriate hygiene and cooling techniques, it is perfectly safe to keep a loved one home for several days. Embalming itself poses more than an eight times greater risk to embalmers of contracting myeloid leukemia than the general population. Bodies with infectious diseases are not usually candidates for embalming and are simply kept cool in a professional setting if not at home.
Q. What does a home funeral cost?
A. The average professionally-directed funeral now costs $8,343 (NFDA), without casket, vault, cremation or burial costs included. A home funeral costs the price of ice, if used, copies of the death certificate as desired, gas to transport the body, and a rigid container, such as a cardboard box or pine casket, usually totaling under $200. Burial and cremation costs would be added at whatever the going rate is in your cemetery or facility.
Q. What are the benefits of home funerals?
A. The many significant benefits are environmental, financial, therapeutic, and spiritual. Families who choose to care for their own report a sense of completion, a feeling of having done their best for those they love, and a stronger connection to their friends and family and community. Having something meaningful to do to help others through a crisis or sorrowful time is usually empowering for all involved.
Q. What are the top reasons families choose home funeral care?
A. Top reasons for electing to conduct care of the deceased include, in no particular order:
- to take the time to be truly present
- to avoid outsourcing the responsibilities they choose to assume themselves
- to avoid professionalizing a family rite of passage
- to make meaning of the death
- to begin healing the family and community
- to take environmental responsibility by foregoing invasive and toxic procedures
- to make the funeral affordable
- to find spiritual connection
- to participate more fully in their own lives and in their family life
Q. Who owns the dead?
A. In the language of the law, the family member who has the most direct link in the next-of-kin chain has legal custody and control of the body. If unwilling or unable to assume that responsibility, members along the chain as spelled out by state law are imbued with the authority until someone is able to act.
The fact that most families choose to relinquish that partial responsibility by signing a contract with a professional that transfers physical custody does not negate the family’s right to decide what ultimately happens to that body. Funeral directors have no medico-legal authority. The only service they are licensed to perform that a family member cannot is embalming.
Some states require that refrigeration and/or disposition occur within a certain time frame, which usually apply when being handled by a funeral firm, but home funeral families choose in most states how the body is handled, preserved, transported, and disposed of on their own timetable. Even in cases of autopsy (where the ME’s right supersedes the family’s temporarily) and organ donation, the decision remains with the next-of-kin after the process is complete, including having the body brought home.
The fact that most families choose to relinquish that partial responsibility by signing a contract with a professional that transfers physical custody does not negate the family’s right to decide what ultimately happens to that body. Funeral directors have no medico-legal authority. The only service they are licensed to perform that a family member cannot is embalming.
Some states require that refrigeration and/or disposition occur within a certain time frame, which usually apply when being handled by a funeral firm, but home funeral families choose in most states how the body is handled, preserved, transported, and disposed of on their own timetable. Even in cases of autopsy (where the ME’s right supersedes the family’s temporarily) and organ donation, the decision remains with the next-of-kin after the process is complete, including having the body brought home.
Q. If a body is not embalmed, what must a family do to care for it? When should the body be buried?
A. This is a more complex question than it sounds. Care of the deceased changes depending on whether it was an anticipated death or unanticipated, under what conditions the person died, under what regional weather conditions the period will be subject to, and whether there will be travel involved.
Unembalmed bodies (according to the CDC, CID, WHO and PANO) are not dangerous nor are they more infectious than they were in life. Simple methods of cooling the body such as using dry ice, Techni-ice, an a/c unit, or opening a window in cool weather are more than sufficient. Even without these methods, most bodies can be kept for up to 3 days in a 65 degree room. Bathing the body with simple soap and water to remove the usual surface bacteria will dispense with concerns about smell. The body is then dressed if desired or wrapped in a shroud or blanket, sheet, or quilt.
Removal for final disposition — either burial or cremation — is at the discretion of the family, either themselves or by hiring that service. Some states require that a funeral director file the death certificate or witness a burial, but in most states the family can file any necessary paperwork and make any other additional arrangements themselves, such as calling Social Security or filing obituaries. There is no time limit in most states for burial or cremation unless cause of death requires it, and only a handful of states have mandatory waiting periods before cremation.
Unembalmed bodies (according to the CDC, CID, WHO and PANO) are not dangerous nor are they more infectious than they were in life. Simple methods of cooling the body such as using dry ice, Techni-ice, an a/c unit, or opening a window in cool weather are more than sufficient. Even without these methods, most bodies can be kept for up to 3 days in a 65 degree room. Bathing the body with simple soap and water to remove the usual surface bacteria will dispense with concerns about smell. The body is then dressed if desired or wrapped in a shroud or blanket, sheet, or quilt.
Removal for final disposition — either burial or cremation — is at the discretion of the family, either themselves or by hiring that service. Some states require that a funeral director file the death certificate or witness a burial, but in most states the family can file any necessary paperwork and make any other additional arrangements themselves, such as calling Social Security or filing obituaries. There is no time limit in most states for burial or cremation unless cause of death requires it, and only a handful of states have mandatory waiting periods before cremation.
Q. What, other than legal requirements, impede families from exercising their right to care for their own dead?
A. Because the funeral industry is a tight-knit community, often crematories, cemeteries, and newspapers refuse to accept bodies or information directly from the family by policy or business practice. Even when families have the right to this according to law, they are still being obstructed from handling the entire process without being forced to hire an intermediary.
Some hospitals and hospices also require removal by a professional without regard for policy compliance with the law. Care facilities and hospitals often have limits on how long a body can be sheltered, forcing the family to hire a funeral director to file the death certificate quickly, especially on holidays and weekends when the local offices are not open, in order to obtain the transport permit needed to remove the body to the home.
The process is becoming more, not less, cumbersome for families with the implementation of state Electronic Death Registration Systems, or EDRS. Funeral directors have a direct link to Vital Statistics software, as do town or city clerks, though they are infrequently well-trained. Some states empower doctors and even state police to file death certificates but few have proved willing. Learn more about EDRS and other legal requirements here.
Some hospitals and hospices also require removal by a professional without regard for policy compliance with the law. Care facilities and hospitals often have limits on how long a body can be sheltered, forcing the family to hire a funeral director to file the death certificate quickly, especially on holidays and weekends when the local offices are not open, in order to obtain the transport permit needed to remove the body to the home.
The process is becoming more, not less, cumbersome for families with the implementation of state Electronic Death Registration Systems, or EDRS. Funeral directors have a direct link to Vital Statistics software, as do town or city clerks, though they are infrequently well-trained. Some states empower doctors and even state police to file death certificates but few have proved willing. Learn more about EDRS and other legal requirements here.
Support NHFAWe ask you to give to the National Home Funeral Alliance because in all 50 states it is your right to care for your own loved one after death. The NHFA is working to make sure communities and families know their rights. Please consider becoming a sustaining donor and help us continue this important work
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