Hi Brian, Based on what you told me, it sounds like there’s some misinformation, but I can’t quite tease out where it came from. Here are my guesses: 1. There’s no state law that says a body must be embalmed before cremation. It’s a bit more complicated. Some states require that a body be buried, cremated, embalmed, OR refrigerated within a certain amount of time. So, it could have been the case that the body couldn’t be cremated quickly enough to meet the state’s embalming or refrig. requirement, and the funeral home didn’t have refrigeration. If so, that’s unfortunate, and a good argument for why all funeral homes should be required to offer refrigeration. 2. It’s also possible the funeral home lied to you about a nonexistent state law. If so, you should file a complaint with your state’s funeral board, with the Federal Trade Commission, and a copy to Funeral Consumers Alliance. If you give me more details and a location, I can help you with that. Also, were you given a printed, itemized price list to choose from before you finalized the arrangements? Did you get an itemized receipt? If so, were there services on that receipt that you didn’t ask for, and that you wouldn’t have chosen? Certainly a simple cremation should be much less expensive than a full-service burial, but I’d need to know exactly what you chose – or what services you might have been forced to buy – before I could give an opinion on what happened. Josh Slocum Executive Director Funeral Consumers Alliance
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