Pre-Planning

Pre-arranging a funeral allows an individual and/or their family to plan a funeral in advance of the passing. When someone passes away, it is a very stressful time. Having pre-arrangements made greatly reduces decisions the family has to make.

If you are interested in pre-arranging a funeral, an appointment can be made to meet with one of our staff members. During the meeting, the staff member will go through the following with you:

• Gather initial information that would be needed for an obituary and/or death certificate (i.e. name, date of birth, etc)
• Discuss options such as burial or cremation
• Go over a general price list of services
• Show you options of merchandise, such as caskets, vaults, urns, etc.
• Create a document outlining services you want. A copy will be given to you and we will keep a copy.

When you pre-arrange with us, you may want to simply inform us of the details of the service for us to keep on file and not pre-pay. When an individual chooses this method, the prices we quote during the meeting reflect prices in real time. Because operating costs can increase over time, the price quoted without pre-paying likely will change in the future.

An individual’s funeral can be pre-paid in advance. A couple of options to consider are:

• Opt to allow one of our licensed insurance agents to write a burial insurance plan.
• Assign over existing life insurance to the funeral home to cover the cost of your funeral.

Another advantage of pre-paying a funeral is asset protection. If a loved one is going to require care in a nursing home or assisted living, there is a chance their assets would be used up to pay for their care, thus requiring dependency on public aid assistance. Pre-paying a funeral can allow you to utilize current assets before they are exhausted to pay for long term care.