Late last week Fox 6 TV of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, broke a story pertaining to Death Care that I found to be incredulous.  Here’s the headline, “Milwaukee County funeral home debt; officials move to collect fees”.   You can access the story here.

 

The headline itself is fairly innocuous but the story goes on to relate that funeral homes in Milwaukee County “owe large unpaid fees to the Medical Examiner’s Office”.  Again, innocuous until you read a little further and see this statement, “Records show at least 18 funeral homes owe more than $25,000, with one owing over $500,000″.

 

Here’s the story as related by Fox News 6 of Milwaukee’s television news broadcast:

When I quickly add up the amounts owed from a partial list of those funeral homes that owe money I’m guessing that the Medical Examiner’s Office is owed upwards of $2 million from local funeral homes.  And, according to the article, here’s what is coming next:  “Milwaukee County officials are moving forward with plans to pursue collections against funeral homes. . .”

 

Here’s what the article says about how those accounts, receivable by the county and payable by the funeral homes, came to be and the county’s next step for collecting the amounts due them:

1. “The county says certain fees are required when someone dies. Some are mandated by state law, including death certificates, body transport and cremation permits.”
2. “Funeral homes often collect those costs from families and are then responsible for paying the county.”
3. “. .Over the years, county officials say some funeral homes have fallen behind on payments.”
4. “Next week, a Milwaukee County committee is expected to consider a resolution that would allow the county’s attorneys to pursue collection efforts or legal action against funeral homes with significant unpaid balances.”

 

 

Here’s a partial list,that appeared in the linked article of the funeral homes that allegedly owe the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office and the approximate amounts owed by each:

 

 

Funeral Director Daily take:   These are big numbers and a lot of funeral homes.  One has to believe that there is more to this story than is reported.  This many funeral homes not paying their bills does not make sense. . . . .even if the Milwaukee County Medical’s Office had a “bad billing procedure”.

 

A funeral home that has a past-due account payable of $500,000 could jeopardize the business as a going-concern going forward if they are asked to make the payable whole.

 

I’m a “financial” guy and I’m guessing that part of this issue may be because the Medical Examiner’s Office never, or only periodically sent out billing statements and/or never pressed accounts when they were past 30 days due.   If that is true, that is bad business operations but not a reason for funeral homes to not pay their bills.

 

When I served on the Board of the University of Minnesota and chaired the Financial Operations Committee I was many times taken aback by some of the budget units that had no idea how much they spent on things.  And, when questioned they didn’t seem to know if that was a proper price or not or didn’t know there were options to lower the cost such as scheduling decisions, bulk purchases, and more.

 

In essence, in some instances I was shocked by how so many with apparent low financial literacy aptitudes were in charge of so many financial decisions that affected the taxpayer.  And, . . . . . if you follow the news about the State of Minnesota and our issues today that is not surprising to me from my history at the university.  By the way, I was the Financial Chairman responsible for a university budget of $4.1 billion that was allocated over 52 budgetary units.

 

Finally, and I’ll preface this by saying that I am not an attorney, but if some of these funds owed are from cash advances that families paid to the funeral home, according to my question to Gemini Artificial Intelligence, there could possibly be legal issues involved for not paying the government unit as well.  Here’s how Gemini AI answered my question on such:

 

“Yes, collecting a government fee and then intentionally not forwarding it for payment is a serious matter that generally constitutes fraud, embezzlement, or misappropriation of funds, which can lead to severe criminal and civil penalties.”

 

As this moves forward it will be interesting to see “the other side of the story”.

 

More news from the world of Death Care:

• FuneralSpeech AI launches AI eulogy generator to help families navigate moments of loss.  National Today – Tech
• Eight out of ten Flemish people choose cremation.  Belga News Agency (Belgium)
• American Academy McAllister Institute reduces enrollment barriers with new 60-second college application.  XPR Media, Des Moines Register (IA)
• Dalhousie to re-open anatomy lab this fall.  CBC News (Canada)
• Local funeral home hits 20-year milestone.  The Coatland Times (NC)

 

Enter your e-mail below to join the 3,201 others who receive Funeral Director Daily articles daily

“A servant’s attitude guided by Christ leads to a significant life”