Regulations
It will surprise no one that in the Covid-19 pandemic year of 2020, that life expectancy for Americans dropped by the largest decline since World War II. This article from the Associated Press also indicates that the life expectancy drop for Black Americans was the largest since the Great Depression and for Hispanics it was…
Read MoreIt was probably ten years ago when I, as a funeral director, received a phone call from a member of a family whose father was on hospice care. The family member told me that his father “wanted his body donated to science” and had made arrangements for a private company to help them do that. …
Read MoreIt’s not all that common but it does happen in the death care profession from time to time. The “it” I’m talking about is regulatory infractions that can cause a funeral home or other other death care business, such as a crematory, to be shut down for some period of time. When it does happen…
Read MoreIn a decision that came down in early July 2021 a Canadian arbitrator has ruled against a funeral home and for its two employees in a case involving employees rights to a pierced nose and un-covered tattoos. You can read the article from Canada’s National Post on the decision here. In essence, the decision by…
Read MoreI’ve operated and managed a thriving funeral home. If you’ve been there and done it. . . you know it is 24/7/365. . . .not many days go by when you don’t worry about something. And, I’ve dealt with grieving family members, regulators, and the consumer movement too. When you operate a community funeral home,…
Read MoreIn the summer of 2020, Great Britain’s Competition and Market Authority (CMA) investigated the death care business sector and one statement that was made was this, “some funeral directors were providing unacceptable low levels of care of the deceased”. Couple that with the fact that, according to SunLife’s latest cost of dying report, funeral costs…
Read MoreFrom time to time over the past couple of years Funeral Director Daily has written articles about the Amigone Funeral Home crematory in Tonawanda, New York. The crematory is part of a funeral home in a residential neighborhood where neighbors have complained for years. Legislation was recently passed in New York that would, when signed…
Read MoreAn accident in 2017 that took the life of a funeral home worker has the State of Maine legislature searching for answers on how to make funeral vehicles safer for death care employees. Last week, according to this article, the Maine Legislature Committee on Innovation, Development, Economic Advancement and Business “ordered the Board of Funeral…
Read MoreFormer Vice-President Walter Mondale died Monday night at age 93. Being a Minnesotan like Mondale put me into a reminiscing mood and I thought of the 1970’s when Mondale was our state’s U.S. Senator and elected with President Jimmy Carter as Vice-President in 1976. It also reminded me of a lesson from my dad about…
Read MoreThere has been a lot of talk at the federal level about creating a limit to liability law for those essential businesses that had to operate over the timeline of the Covid-19 pandemic while knowledge of the virus was becoming better and better every day. The thought process has been that businesses should not be…
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