Payment at Funeral Homes/Cemetery

Along with all of the stress during this difficult time comes the added financial stress of paying for the services and burial or cremation.  If you are receiving life insurance proceeds, make sure to talk to the funeral home or cemetery about taking an "assignment" from the life insurance.  What this means is that the insurance will pay the funeral home first and then send you the remaining insurance amount.  The importance of this is that one does not have to come up with payment to the funeral home at this moment.  They, understandably, want to be paid for their services.  Funerals and burials become quite expensive very quickly.... not having to come up with that money is one less thing to be concerned about.  

Assignments are pretty much standard practice and should not be an issue.  In Florida, the funeral home I worked with used a third party to process the assignments.  There was an additional fee for using this company.  It was almost like a loan to cover the time between the actual service and the time the funeral home receives the money from the insurance company.  In my case this was an unusually long time (about 5 months.)  In larger cities and more urban areas this may become more of a standard practice, but in smaller communities, it does not seem to be happening as much.  

Since my insurance was coming from a well known company, I had the human resources person (through my husband's work) negotiate the additional fee for the service and did not end up having to pay it.  I do not know how successful this would be in general.  

One day at a time,

Penelope