What is a Home Funeral?

Making Informed Decisions

The Home Funeral Alliance exists to educate and empower families and communities to care for their own dead. We are a national education organization dedicated to family-led and community-centered deathcare.

We advance ethical, accessible home funeral education grounded in respect for cultural diversity, personal choice, and community care. We support collaboration across professional, regulatory, and community-based systems while working to ensure that home funerals are understood as a real, legal, and accessible option.

Our volunteer-led structure reflects our commitment to sustainability, transparency, and relationship-driven change. Our work welcomes families, funeral professionals, advocates, and community members. We prioritize accessibility, inclusivity, and sustainability, knowing this work is relational and ongoing. We listen, adapt, and remain accountable to the people most impacted by deathcare systems.

We honor the many ways people care for their dead. Join us.

Community Deathcare

Deathcare includes caring for a dying person through the pan-death process, from death until the body is given it’s final rest or release. This care could look like caregiving, nursing, hospice care, medical support, respite care, spiritual support, bodycare, wake and funeral help, grief support, and disposition arrangements. Deathcare can be any one or all of these things based on the composition of one's resources and community.

Building and participating in community is complicated for most of us, especially for those living in Western culture. Additionally, communities are unique to the time and place of someone's life. Many current, Western systems of living have become isolated, lacking the resources or capacity to fully care for its members. Some people may not have a solid community and would need to reach out for care support. In these instances, larger community care teams play a larger role. These care teams often exist in spaces of shared geographic location, culture, religion, and skill level.

It is legal to care for your dead in every state, and may involve:

bodycare
celebration and ritual
making, buying, or renting urns, caskets, shrouds, etc.
having them lay in honor
disposition of the body

WHY HAVE A HOME FUNERAL?

People choose to engage in community deathcare for a variety of reasons, including:

To follow the wishes of the dying and grieving
To slow down, allowing access to the body so friends family present can process the death in their own time and in their own way.
To acknowledge the value of continuity and significance of place.
It may be a necessity due to lack of funeral services in the area.
Access to more time, privacy, and/or hands-on engagement for a more meaningful experience and support for the grieving process
Because they can (it’s their legal right!)

Home Funerals: Yesterday & Today

People from all cultures have been caring for their dead for millennia, regardless of factors like

climate, illness, age of deceased, or any traumatic circumstances surrounding the death. The

professionalization and commodification of the funeral industry really took off at the beginning of

the 20th century. It has become a common belief that individuals are no longer able to care for

their own deceased and must hire funeral professionals to provide the care.

In most states, communities can take care of everything that is necessary on their own without

hiring a funeral director. In some states, the law impedes communities from completing all tasks

and may require hiring a funeral director to provide specific services. These usually include filling

out paperwork and transportation, but hands-on care is still an option for communities if that is

desired. Regardless of where you live, you have the right to provide much, if not all, of the care

necessary. Other than the legal requirements in your state, there is no right or wrong way to do things.

Caring for the body is safe and possible.