Prepaid Funerals

Pre-paid funerals.

We have had a number of inquiries about pre-paid funerals and the costs of making these arrangements .

The Social Welfare Department when assessing the assets for residential care allow the person involved to pre pay funeral expenses to the extent of $10,000 and this is excluded from the assessment of assets .

How can this be arranged?

This can be paid to various people , the most common being to a Funeral Home . The Social Welfare people are only interested in receiving a chit or receipt from the Funeral director that he has received the money so that this can be deducted from the asset assessment .
They are not concerned with what the funeral director does with the money and in some cases this has caused some problems .

The Funeral Director can place the monies in his own Trust Account and possibly will make a charge for this . Alternatively he may use an Insurance company in which case there could be a charge for his and the Insurance company’s services .This is a perfectly normal commercial transaction , in that , the buyer for his $10,000 is given certain returns , negotiated at the time of sale.
If the funeral director chooses not to hold the monies in his own trust fund and reinvests it elsewhere then that should essentially have been sorted out at the time of deposit with the costs involved .

Funeral directors can , if they are so directed or wish to, invest in a Funeral Trust or the individual can invest directly in a Funeral Trust . One Funeral Trust charges a one off fee of $150 and then invests the money in their mortgage trust which pays cumulative interest . The Funeral Trust advises Social Welfare of the transaction which is acceptable to them . At the death the Trust pays out to the funeral director and returns the surplus to the estate .

If you are arranging a pre-paid funeral be sure that you know exactly how much of the monies you invest will be available for funeral expenses .

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