Adams County Coroner James Keller has came up with a controversial policy concerning the payments for indigent services in his county.  You can read about the situation from NBCChicago.com here.

The story relates how Coroner Keller has the family sign over the rights for the deceased to his office.  He then cremates the deceased and holds the ashes and death certificate until families pay a $1,000 fee.  If families cannot come up with the fee, the ashes are eventually buried in an unmarked grave.

At one time, according to the article,  the state of Illinois paid up to $1,655 to funeral homes for taking care of indigent services.  However, most recently, beginning in 2015 the state had a two-year budget impasse and counties ended up picking up the cost of services.  Keller indicates that with his system, the $1000 paid by the family goes entirely to funeral homes and crematories.

Funeral Director Daily take:  This is an interesting issue.  Illinois is not the only state where indigent funeral payments are a discussion point — we have had articles on how the state of West Virginia is running out of indigent allotment money annually causing consternation among families and funeral homes alike.

I don’t think this issue is going to get any clearer in the near future.  State legislatures across the country are struggling with budget issues on all kinds of items — in my opinion, it is a fall-out of the struggle between those who believe in limited governments with “safety nets” and those that believe in the large government programs and an entitlement society.

I find it interesting about the “holding” of the death certificate to families that do not pay.  Keller would argue that giving some families access to the death certificate would allow those families to life insurance proceeds that they just don’t want public authorities to know they have coming.  Keller’s belief is that if there is some assets, such as life insurance, then those assets should go to the death care services before they are given to the deceased’s family.

However, I’ve also seen cell phone companies that would not cancel a service contract until they received a death certificate.  There are bound to be some issues with the withholding of the death certificate.

As you can imagine, there are both supporters and detractors of this system.  One funeral director was quoted as saying, “These people that don’t have any money are very, very lucky to live in Adams County”.  On the other side of the issue, one family member said, “He could’ve died in prison and been better off.  He deserved better.”

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