MLB Baseball player Pitching up a Preneed funeral scam-Your Funeral Guy

Baseball Hall of Famer Andre Dawson is involved in a Preneed Funeral Scam

A baseball Legend Named Andre Dawson, owns a Funeral Home in Miami that  is not honoring Preneed or Prepaid Funerals. Dawson and his brother purchased the Funeral home along with it’s contracts. Because a former owner did not deposit and pocketed pre need funds Contracts for PRE NEED Funerals are not being allowed to stand! When Dawson purchased the funeral home he also bought and now owns the contracts.

This all sounds terribly familiar and similar to the Illinois Funeral Directors Association, and the National Prearranged Services Prepaid Funeral Scams.

A publicly funded organization that cares for poor and disabled adults is suing Miami baseball legend Andre Dawson, alleging that his family’s funeral home business reneged on a deal to provide prepaid memorial services and burials for deceased clients.

One man’s corpse lay in limbo for weeks because Dawson’s Grace Memorial Funeral Home refused to accept the remains, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. via miami herald

The plaintiff  in this lawsuit is the  Guardianship Program of Dade County, a nonprofit agency funded by the county and state that acts as a public guardian for poor adults- Dawson is refusing to honor pre need or prepaid funeral contracts sold by the previous owners.

Dawson, a Hall of Fame outfielder who played for the Expos, Cubs, Red Sox and Marlins, did not return a phone call seeking comment. But his brother insisted that their company did not break an existing contract because the prepaid funerals and cemetery plots were sold illegally by a previous owner. “We are victims and just as innocent” as the Guardianship Program, Brown told The Miami Herald. via miami herald

The risk of purchasing funeral preneed is always the same, the funeral director or someone along the way may simply take your money.

Funeral Industry|Funeral News|Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy

Minnesota Funeral Directors Association Move Home Funerals Closer to the Main Street-YourFuneralGuy

Minnesota has moved Home Funerals closer to Main Street, USA

The Minnesota Funeral Directors Association has moved Home Funerals closer to Main street USA. Last week Minnesota passed a law making it easier for the citizens of that State to conduct funerals at home.

The Law allows families to DISPLAY A  NON EMBALMED BODY at a public viewing or service up to four days after the death.

The new law  makes it possible for children to be in the presence of an unembalmed body,

The law expands the types of transportation that families can use to move bodies.

Snippet from the News:

The Minnesota Funeral Directors Association, which at first balked at the relaxed embalming regulations, eventually dropped their opposition and helped craft the final language, Laine said.

Under the new law, the service must be on private property — such as a home, a funeral home or church — and can’t be in a park or on other public property.

via www.duluthnewstribune.com

Funeral industry|Funeral News|Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy

Click Here To Read more about Minnesota and Home Funerals.

Burr Oak Cemetery Auction April 26th 2010-YourFuneralGuy

The last day to enter a bid on Burr Oak Cemetery is today April 26th 2010. A Bankruptcy Judge is to approve the sale  on April 27th 2010,

The auction is happening in the law Offices of the firm handling the cemetery bankruptcy  for Perpetua Inc the current owner of the cemetery.

A bankruptcy court judge already has approved an offer of $25,000 for Burr Oak in Alsip and $650,000 for its sister cemetery, Cedar Park Cemetery in Calumet Park. Today’s auction will determine if anyone is willing to go higher.

The bid that already has passed court muster came from Cemecare, described as a partnership between Gatling Community Development Inc. and Restvale Cemetery in Alsip.

via www.chicagobreakingnews.com

The Burr oak Cemetery Scandal was exposed in July 2009 where over 300 graves were desecrated, and several cemetery workers arrested.

President Obama’s Eulogy at W.VA.Miners Memorial Service|YourFuneralGuy

West Virginia Miners’ Memorial Video- Here is Video of  President Barack Obama’s  Eulogy Sunday Aug 25th 2009   for the miners who died in the worst coal  mining disaster in 40 years.

Funeral Industry|Funeral Blog by R. Brian Burkhardt Your Funeral Guy

C-Span to do Live Streaming Video Of Coal Miners Memorial Service |Your Funeral Guy

C-Span  will to do Live Streaming Video of  the Coal Miners Memorial Funeral Service. Obama , Biden and the West Virginia Governor are all scheduled Governor are all scheduled to speak at a memorial sevice in W.Va.

Click Here for live streaming Video

This afternoon, Pres. Obama speaks at a memorial service in Beckley, West Virginia, for 29 coal miners killed on April 5 by an underground methane explosion. The accident at the Upper Big Branch Mine is considered the nation’s worst mining disaster in 40 years.via www.c-span.org

Funeral Industry|Funeral News|Funeral Blog By your Funeral guy

Live Coverage|President Obama, Biden, West VA Gov. to speak at Miners Funeral |Your Funeral Guy

President Obama,  Vice President Biden, And the Governor of West Virginia to speak live at Funeral for those who died in the latest Mining Disaster. This is event is to be carried live by Fox News.The services are to begin at 3:30 Central  Eastern Time.

Site Manager-Coal Mine

- President Barack Obama says 29 victims in the worst mining disaster in a generation died in pursuit of a better life and he’s promising safer working conditions underground. Obama planned to speak at a memorial service Sunday afternoon for the victims of the April 5 explosion at the mine in Montcoal, W.Va., owned by Massey Energy Co.via www.news8.net

Funeral Industry|Funeral News| Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy

A Major Funeral Corporations Numbers Point To Funeral Industry Decline|Your Funeral Guy

Again A Major Funeral Corporation’s Numbers Point To Funeral Industry Decline, and the rise of cremation and  lower cost funerals.

If you dig deep into Matthews International NYSE:MATW)Numbers you find More Funeral Industry decline. Matthews is honest in  reporting their numbers and has a long history of  doing business outside the funeral industry. Hillenbrand Inc, has recently sent almost half a billion dollars in it’s purchase of K-Tron, a non funeral business. Hillenbrand is the parent Company of Batesville Casket Co which is the largest casket company in North America.

Profit did rise significantly but this was due to asset acquisition and other adjustments and  readily admitted by the CEO. Not real growth, The honesty on the part of Matthews International is greatly appreciated. It is a contrast to that of Service Corporation International, Stewart Enterprises Inc, and Batesville Casket  Co.

For the fiscal 2010 second quarter, reported sales for each of our Memorialization segments were higher than a year ago.  For the Bronze and Casket segments, acquisitions were the primary factor in the improvement.  Excluding acquisitions, sales for both of these businesses declined, reflecting a lower casketed death rate.  Based on available data, U.S. death rates were estimated to have declined approximately 4% compared to the same quarter a year ago, with the casketed death rate (non-cremation) estimated to have declined over 6%.  Second quarter sales for the Cremation segment increased over the prior year primarily as a result of growth in European equipment sales.

via www.prnewswire.com

Funeral Industry|Funeral News|Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy

Matthews International Corp. saw profit jump 25 percent in the second quarter over the same period a year ago beating Wall Street expectations…….

Sales in the quarter were also up slightly by 1.8 percent to $200.9 million, due primarily to acquisitions and a favorable currency exchange, the company said in a statement.

via pittsburgh.bizjournals.com

VIDEO:FH Illegally Cut The Legs OFF The Body|Remains Open|yourfuneralguy

A Funeral that got a lot of Media time for illegally cutting the legs off  a clients body remains open. A big production was made of the Investigation into Cave Funeral Home in the press. Many times when atrocities and crimes happen at Funeral Homes or Funeral Corporations, those places get to go on with business as usual. The funeral industry continually refuses to police itself.

Here is the video.

Funeral industry |Funeral News | Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy

FTC and the disposal of third party Casket packaging |Your Funeral Guy

FTC has issued some information on Caskets from third parties like Walmart and Costco

One of the way Funeral directors have tried to get around NOT BEING ABLE TO CHARGE families and consumers for third party Caskets in the USA is to charge the Consumer for Packaging disposal. Costco and Walmart distributing caskets have upset funeral directors so much that the National Funeral Directors Association, the NFDA had a board member recently testifiy before Congress on third party casket.

The Chief Counsel of the National Funeral Directors Association recently examined an Opinion letter  issued by the FTC on third Party caskets. The lawyer for the NFDA , advises funeral directors and funeral home owners what they can and cannot do when third party caskets are purchased.

What all this indicates is that the Funeral Industry is doing all it can to squeeze evey dollar out of the funeral family, the funeral consumer. If you obtain a third party casket which I recommend you do, do not pay for packaging disposal.

Universal Casket Company, which supplies the caskets that are sold by Costco, recently sought guidance from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) staff about the delivery of third-party caskets to funeral homes. In response to that request, FTC Funeral Rule Coordinator Craig Tregillus issued an opinion letter on April 19, 2010 that addressed several important issues, including whether funeral homes must assist in unloading third-party caskets from delivery trucks and the disposal of packing materials. Highlights from the opinion include the following:

“Disposal of Packaging. In a footnote in the Staff Advisory Opinion, Mr. Tregillus provides guidance on the increasingly troublesome issue of third-party casket packaging. Funeral homes have reported that casket shipments that originate from Costco and Wal-Mart often are packaged in crates which require the funeral home to incur labor and disposal cost. The FTC Staff Advisory Opinion indicates that while funeral homes may not charge a consumer for the cost of disposing of the packaging, the Funeral Rule does not prevent a funeral provider from requiring that all casket suppliers take any casket packaging with them and dispose of it after a delivery. In other words, as long as the funeral home requires casket wholesalers from which it purchases caskets to dispose of casket packaging materials, it may also impose the same requirement on third-party casket shippers delivering caskets to the funeral home.”via www.nfda.org

Funeral Industry|Funeral News|Funeral Blog by Your Funeral Guy.

Charging for Disposal for packaging is simply funeral home anger for purchasing a casket from a third party.

Chicago Tribune presents cremation as a viable alternative|YourFuneralGuy

The Chicago Tribune has done a piece on cremation presenting  it as a viable alternative to the Traditional Funeral. This is a very good thing as in the past weeks the Funeral Consumer has been under assault by the Traditional Funeral Industry. Thomas Lynch, the brother of The NFDA(National Funeral Directors Association President Elect) has written a venomous attack  on consumers in all of places the Christian Century.

A Snippet on Lynch’s attack on cremation, as a low cost funeral alternative, and consumers who make that choice is here. What seems to be the heart of the issue for Lynch is the survival of the traditional funeral home, and making sure that his tradition controls the consumer choice. This leads to another key question WHO OWNS OR CONTROLS A FUNERAL?

In assaulting the consumer for  pursuing the Lower cost cremation alternative in this economy is unacceptable. And Connecting Directors.com posting this article shows that the traditional funeral industry is positioning itself against the  American Family, their very clients.

Funeral Industry|Funeral News|funeral blog by Your Funeral Guy