Requires cemetery corporations to provide customers with a bill of rights

BILL NUMBER:S4399

Title of bill

An act to amend the not-for-profit corporation law, in relation to a cemetery customer's bill of rights

Purpose or general idea of bill

The purpose of this bill is to require the conspicuous posting and distribution of a cemetery customer's bill of rights.

Summary of specific provisions

Section 1510 of the Not-For-Profit Corporation Law is amended by adding a new paragraph, which requires the posting and distribution of the cemetery customer's bill of rights.

Justification

Death touches every New York family. Death care is one of the largest expenses forced upon families. Purchasing interment rights whether for burial, entombment in a mausoleum crypt or placement of cremains in a columbarium niche typically costs thousands of dollars. Added to this is the cost of a funeral, opening and closing the grave and the cost of purchasing and placing a marker or monument.

Additionally, at the time that important decisions are being made for a dying or dead family member the survivors are under emotional distress and are pressured to act quickly, forcing them to make expensive, but perhaps, unwise decisions. The very nature of death care issues and the vulnerability of a captive consumer make the death care industry similar to the insurance and banking industries in the need for close government regulation. The general public is poorly informed about cemetery issues.

Although the Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule requires that important funeral consumer rights be included in a funeral home's General Price List (GPL), which is to be offered in any face-to-face meeting of funeral director and customer at the beginning of any discussion about arranging a funeral, there is no comparable federal requirement for disclosure by cemeteries. Disclosure is left to the states. Although New York has a requirement for a document similar to the GPL for funeral homes, no comparable document exists for cemeteries. The combination of uneducated cemetery personnel and an uninformed public puts the customer at risk Families are in the unenviable position of having to rely on the knowledge and honesty of cemetery sales personnel.

A simple one-page Cemetery Consumer's Bill of Rights posted in the cemetery corporation's office and given to every potential customer and to anyone who wants a copy will quickly educate and empower the cemetery customer, by providing information about very important rights when the customer most needs it, that is when considering the purchase or exercise of interment rights.

Prior legislative history

2007-08: S.5492 Corporations, Authorities and Commissions/A.7177 Passed Assembly 2009-10: Corporations, Authorities & Commissions

Fiscal implications

None.

Effective date

This act shall take effect on the sixtieth day after it shall have become a law.