Break the Silence: Unveiling the Tragedy of Funeral Poverty

What Is Funeral Poverty? 

The cost of dying is rising and funeral poverty is quickly becoming a serious, widespread problem for mourners. Funeral poverty happens when the living family members cannot cover the funeral expenses without going through financial hardships.

A basic funeral costs £4,141 in the UK, with the London average reaching a cost of £5,951. Meanwhile, in the United States, the average funeral with a burial costs $7,848, while the average for cremation is $6,970. According to the Guardian, one in five families suffers from “noticeable financial concerns” when dealing with the cost of dying

This is, however, only a part of the expenses families often pay after losing someone. A funeral ceremony, memorial, and other gatherings like celebrating life, any affairs that must be handled in the wake of the deceased’s passing, and the process of burying and cremation all together form the total cost of dying.

.And even though the expenses can be brought down, the surviving family members often experience distress, shame, and guilt due to their inability to send off their loved ones in the best possible way.

How Funeral Poverty Affects Families 

While struggling with grief, finances are rarely the first thing on families’ minds. The extremely tumultuous and difficult times leading up to the death of a loved one and immediately after it put those left behind in a very vulnerable position.

In many cases, the main expense is the services rendered by a funeral director. Many funeral homes rely on manipulative practices to pressure grieving relatives into overpaying and purchasing unnecessary items and services.

The situation got so bad that the Federal Trade Commission forced funeral agencies to display the cost of their services plainly and without obfuscation — something that goes without saying for virtually any other service or industry.

Due to financial pressures and convoluted practices, more and more families make sacrifices in other areas of their lives to afford the cost of dying. What’s more, many families feel forced to make compromises with the ceremony and that leads to shame and guilt.

Cremation is more affordable than a traditional burial. It removes the need for purchasing a burial plot and an expensive coffin, but the cost of cremation also is going up.

What happens is you absolutely can’t afford a funeral or cremation?

• In the UK if no one is able or willing to pay for a funeral a public health funeral will be held. 
• In the United States if there are no funds available the body of the deceased is signed over to the state to be buried or cremated. 

Dealing with Funeral Poverty

There are several ways to prepare for or mitigate financial troubles when a loved one passes away.

End-of-life planning usually helps with allocating some funds for the final journey, but there are other ways to get an affordable funeral service that is personalized, meaningful, and healing.

Affordable Options — Do You Need a Funeral Director?

Funeral directors are professionals who can help tremendously in organizing a funeral. From storing the corpse to preparing it for the ceremony and arranging the right venue for it, they handle mostly all logistics. But are funeral directors necessary?

A funeral director is legally necessary in nice states, mostly for obtaining permission for the funeral. The states are New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, and Louisiana.

Overall, even in these states, a funeral can be arranged without a funeral director. Finding one that is affordable and honest, and won’t guilt-force grieving family members into unnecessary purchases is hard.

Even if you decide to take care of the funeral, a funeral home can be useful for certain services:

• Buying a coffin (even though procuring one from the manufacturer is going to be cheaper)
• Transporting the body — In some states it is mandatory to use professional services for the purpose
• Storing the body — Refrigeration may be necessary in warm climates and when the burial is planned to happen days after death occurs
• Embalming — In the vast majority of cases, embalming is an optional, costly procedure, but if it is necessary a skilled mortician should perform it
• Paperwork — In most states, funeral directors aren’t necessary to process the legalities surrounding death, but they can certainly speed things up

All in all, funeral directors can be extremely helpful but also quite costly. Sadly, the industry has assumed a lot of shady, sales-oriented practices that focus on profit rather than helping the grieving and trying to help out when there is no money for a funeral.

Doing everything by yourself is an arduous task, complicated further by intense grief. On the other hand, it is a unique opportunity to assume full control over the commemorative rituals and to send off your loved one in a personal, meaningful way. Even the best funeral home cannot give you this.

Spending time with the deceased and taking care of them may sound scary and morbid because our modern world has isolated us from the reality of death quite strongly. But throughout history, humans have always taken care of their dead.

Rendering one last act of care and kindness can provide the necessary closure and open the door for healing.

Indeed, in many places, you can find free cremation services for low-income families, but they usually won’t be able to give you back the ashes.

Home Funerals and Green Burials

Home funeral ceremonies and green burials are two other cost-effective alternatives to traditional funeral practices.

Home funerals are a great cost-effective alternative to conventional funerals. Not having to rent a venue and organize all the other things that go along with that is a very effective way to save money when planning a memorial

But their impact stretches far beyond being a financial relief for funeral costs. Doing mostly everything by yourself (with the help of other family members and friends) allows the grieving the take care of the deceased for one last time and arrange things in the best way to honor their memory. Home funerals also don’t have strict time constraints which helps mourners to say goodbye in peace.

Green burials essentially bury an individual without embalming or vaults. This allows them to decompose and become naturally recycled.

Forgoing things like preservatives or embalming fluid that prevent the body from being decomposed by microbes and fungi reduces the overall cost of a funeral by a significant margin.

The body may be buried in a shallow grave to ensure that decomposers can break down the body in a biodegradable casket or something similar that would facilitate this process. 

Payable-On-Death (POD) account

Part of end-of-life planning for oneself is the setting up of a POD account or payable-on-death account.

A POD transfers to one or more beneficiaries when the account creator passes away. The beneficiary or beneficiaries don’t have access to the account while the account holder is still alive.

When the account is passed from the deceased to the beneficiary, it automatically bypasses the account holder’s estate and skips probate completely. However, in certain cases, a POD account could be subject to claims by the government, creditors, or other individuals if the individual who created the account passes away with any debt. 

Life Insurance for Older Adults

There are many routes one can take when setting up life insurance for funeral and final expenses. When someone takes out a life insurance policy in the event of their death, the insurance company will pay out either a lump sum or regular payments to the beneficiaries.

Lump sum offers the benefit of having all the funds from the policy up front, but regular payments allow for those assets to be spread out over time.

There are several kinds of life insurance, some notable examples of these are

• Term life — Term life insurance covers you over a specific amount of time determined when you sign the policy
• Universal or modified life insurance — Permanent life insurance that allows you more flexibility than whole life insurance by letting you raise or lower your premiums
• Whole life insurance — Permanent life insurance that does not allow you to raise or lower your premiums

Life insurance policies for older adults are generally more inexpensive but also pay out much smaller sums. 

Military Veteran Benefits

Veteran benefits help in life and death.

For the United States Military, The VA will pay up to $796 as burial cost assistance if the deceased was hospitalized by the VA at the time of death.

if they were not hospitalized by the VA at the time of death the VA will pay $300 toward burial and funeral expenses in addition to a $796 plot-interment allowance.

For the UK Military funeral expenses will be set up to be paid if:

• Death was due to service before 6 April 2005
• A War Pension Constant Attendance Allowance was being paid or would have been paid had the War Pensioner not been in hospital when they died
• An Unemployability Supplement was in payment at the time of death, and the War Pension was being paid at 80% or higher.

What Are Funeral Payments and Who Are Eligible?

Funeral payments are a government scheme to help people in need cover funeral expenses and avoid funerla poverty. According to the UK government, people are eligible for burial assistance program payments if all of the following apply:

• You get certain benefits or tax credits
• You meet the rules on your relationship with the deceased:
  • Partner of the deceased
  • Parent of a stillborn child
  • Parent or responsible for a deceased child
• If you are a close friend or relative of the deceased, you can potentially get funeral expenses payment if the deceased did not have a partner upon death or if the partner of the deceased or parent of a deceased child cannot claim expenses for some extenuating circumstance, for example, they live abroad or are in prison.
• You’re arranging a funeral in the UK, the European Economic Area (EEA) or Switzerland

Conclusion

There is no way to describe the pain of losing a loved one. The grief can be unbearable. Adding the weight of financial instability can make things excruciating, but there is hope.

There are various ways of ensuring your loved one gets the respect they deserve, whether it is through funeral payments, benefits, crowdfunding, or opting for more affordable funeral options.

Funeral poverty is truly horrible, but if you find yourself in this precarious position, there is hope to find a financially feasible way to commemorate and respect your loved one.