Death, et seq.

In this week’s episode of Death, et seq., I am talking to two of my favorite people about two very different topics. First, I’ll be talking to my uncle, Philip Chaney, about his experience growing up in a funeral family in a small town in Nebraska in the mid-20th century. There were two funeral homes in the county — one Catholic and one Protestant. The funeral homes were both combined with furniture stores, because there weren’t enough calls to make funeral directing a full time job. Another sideline for the funeral directors was running the ambulance service which Phil, as a teenage employee of the furniture store, also was involved in. We will talk about the history of the funeral and cemetery industries quite a bit in this podcast, because the human stories of how these industries developed can help us understand the legal rules and social norms that govern us today.

Second, I’ll be talking to my friend David Childers, a recording artist on Ramseur Records, the singer and guitar player that you hear along with my son Riley Sherman on the music that opens each episode of Death, et seq. Music is an important part of the rituals surrounding death, and I am looking forward to having a number of episodes in which I talk to musicians about the connection between music and mortality.

So, today on Death, et seq. — history, music, and mortality.

Links to David Childers' Work:

His website: www.davidchilders.com

The video for Run Skeleton Run by Corey Ziegler and Robert Childers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlauDVWJdew

This episode discusses funeral and disposition planning in the context of estate planning, explains why pre-planning is a good idea, and discusses the major options available to American funeral consumers including the "traditional" American funeral of embalming, open casket viewing, and in-ground burial or cremation, and alternatives such as home funerals and green burial.

The laws regarding the distribution of property after death are determined by the state in which the deceased person (known as the “decedent”) resided at the time of their death. If a person does not leave a validly executed will, then the court with probate jurisdiction will apply the “intestacy laws” to determine the distribution of a decedent’s property and payment of any debts left at death. Funeral expenses have top priority for payment from the estate at the time of death.

The laws regarding the disposition of human remains are determined by the state in which the person died. Many (but not all) states allow people to designate an agent or leave binding funeral and disposition instructions. There is significant variety between the states in terms of what kinds of documents are needed to designate an agent or leave instructions. If a person does not leave validly executed instructions, then the laws of the state where the person died will determine who gets to take control of the remains and make decisions regarding funeral and disposition.

Visit www.deathetseq.com for more extensive show notes and links to resources.

I am so happy to have Caitlin Doughty as my guest on Episode 4.  Caitlin is a licensed funeral director and the owner of Undertaking LA, a funeral home in Los Angeles.  She is the co-founder of Death Salon and the founder of The Order of the Good Death.  She is the host of Ask a Mortician, which is a highly entertaining series of videos on YouTube (my favorite is the one on Viking burials).

Caitlin is also the author of TWO best-selling books – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, in which she discusses her experience working in a crematory, and From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, which was published last year.

In this episode of Death, et seq., Caitlin discusses what the death positive movement IS.  In this blog post, she explains what the death positive movement IS NOT.

Discussion topics:

⇒   Defining "death positivism"

⇒   What kind of pushback Caitlin receives, and what parts of her message resonate broadly

⇒   How social justice is an integral part of the death positive movement

⇒   Caitlin's relationship with the funeral industry

⇒   What each of us can do to be more death positive on a daily basis

For more extensive show notes and to submit questions, please visit our website at www.deathetseq.com.

In the United States today, most funerals are arranged by licensed funeral directors, most bodies are prepared for disposition by licensed embalmers, and many funerals take place in licensed funeral homes. The funeral industry has been handling the dead in America for only a century. This is largely an industry made up of “mom and pop” family owned businesses, passed down from generation to generation, although there are a few large companies and even a few that are publicly traded.

Dan Isard has been providing management and financial consulting services to the funeral industry for 25 years. He is a frequent speaker on topics related to the funeral industry and writes a column for The Director magazine.

Takeaways:

⇒ Isard’s research shows that there are between 19,000 and 20,000 funeral homes, down about 10% from a decade ago. About 15,000 funeral homes are owned by approximately 9,000 to 10,000 privately owned “Mom and Pop” businesses.

⇒ About 60% of bodies are embalmed.

⇒ Number of locations is declining, total deaths is increasing, our population continues to increase and our death rate is increasing. I asked Isard: “That should suggest boom times for the funeral industry, right?”

⇒ Recent trends cited by Isard: Dramatic increase in cremation disposition and large increase in pre-arrangement, but the profitability of those pre-arrangements is decreasing.

⇒ Isard argues that in order to save the funeral services industry, we have to “blow up” the licensure regime.

⇒ The pricing of cremation also needs to be “blown up” because “burial is subsidizing cremation.”

For more extensive show notes or to submit questions, please visit the website, www.deathetseq.com.

Whenever people ask me what I do, and I tell them that I research, teach, and write about the law of human remains, their first response is to say “uuuh.”  And their second is to say “I’ve always wondered…”  America is a uniquely death denying culture, which is perhaps why we know so little about what follows death.  Not in the spiritual sense…but in the physical sense.  What happens to human remains after death in the United States?

Death is sometimes tragic, sometimes a blessing — always inevitable. Death transforms a living human being, a person with rights and autonomy, into … something else. Tissue and bone, once animated by life, converted into an object of fear, a focus for grief, and a medical and scientific resource. A human cadaver is no longer a person, but neither is it an object to be easily discarded.

Human remains occupy an uneasy position in U.S. law, and their existence raises three fundamental questions. The first question compels our behavior and requires us to act: what, if anything, must be done with human remains? The second question circumscribes our behavior and discourages action: what cannot be done with human remains? The third question seeks to set normative expectations for our behavior: what should be done with human remains?

These are questions that we will address in this podcast, not only in terms of what the law IS, but in terms of what we think the law OUGHT to be.  This means that we have to think about a lot of things that most of us don’t really want to think about.  But I promise it gets easier.  Confronting the reality of human remains and the social norms and laws surrounding them is both a unromantic practical exercise and a deeply spiritual one.  I promise that it’ll be worth it.

I want to start out the podcast the same way I start each new semester of my funeral and cemetery law class at Wake Forest — by talking about a series of real life cases that which I think raise some of the fundamental issues that we’ll be tackling throughout the podcast.  And I thought it would be more interesting if my 17 year old son Liam Sherman helped me out by giving his initial impressions of each case.

For further show notes or to submit questions or comments, please visit the website www.deathetseq.com.

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My name is Tanya Marsh and I teach Funeral and Cemetery law at Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I've found that people have a TON of questions about human remains and what happens to them. That's why I'm launching a new podcast called Death, et. seq (literally, "Death, and what follows"). I plan to answer a lot of questions, demystify funeral planning, and talk to people with expertise on funerals, cemeteries, and other methods of disposition — people with a wide range of perspectives.

Death care in America is changing. Baby boomers, millennials, and the generations in between are increasingly rejecting a century of tradition. Many are demanding more from the established funeral industry. We will examine those demands, how the industry is responding, and what options are available for your own planning.

Probably our biggest goal is to start to break down the taboo of talking about death — death is the great equalizer. We all have to face it someday and if we talk about that reality as a society, we will make better decisions for our families, our communities, and our environment.

Please take a moment to subscribe to the podcast. We will launch shortly with three episodes. First, an introduction featuring real cases. Second, an interview with funeral industry expert Dan Isard, and third, an interview with the founder of the "Death Positive" movement -- Caitlin Doughty. Upcoming episodes include interviews with Ramseur Records recording artist David Childers, Death Salon co-founder Megan Rosenbloom, home funeral and green burial advocate Lee Webster, and many more special guests.

Please visit the website www.deathetseq.com to submit your own questions. Thanks for listening!