Articles
Long-form writing on the funeral industry. Built from interviews, reviews, and the real-world data of how funerals work in 2026 — for funeral home owners, directors, and families navigating a loss.
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Colorado funeral homes after Back to Nature: the 2024 reforms and what they mean for you
In 2023, the Penrose, Colorado case at Return to Nature Funeral Home (often called "Back to Nature" colloquially) brought nearly 200 abandoned, decaying bodies to national attention. The owner was sen
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Direct cremation isn’t the enemy. It’s the new product line.
The US cremation rate crossed 61.9% in 2024 and is projected to hit 80%+ by 2045. Direct-cremation startups (Neptune Society, Tulip, aCremation, Earth Funeral) are taking volume from independents. The
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How to compress insurance assignment from 90 days to 7
The typical US funeral home carries 30 to 90+ days of pending insurance assignment receivables. At an average funeral home doing 200 cases/year with 60% insurance-funded at $4,500 average face value,
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Illinois funeral homes after Heinz: the 2024 reforms and what they mean for you
In summer 2024, the Sangamon County Coroner's office determined that Heinz Funeral Home in Springfield, Illinois had returned the wrong cremains to approximately 80 families over a multi-year period.
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Mail addressed to my dead husband: predatory marketing in the funeral industry
In the Vestamere review corpus, one of the most-shared family complaints is mail or calls directed at the deceased. Examples:
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The 6% margin, and what to do about it
Funeral home net margin was 12-15% three decades ago. Today the industry consensus is ~6%. ICCFA President Lee summarized the existential frame: "If we're not growing, we're dying." The 37% per-case p
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The FTC Funeral Rule rewrite — a practical explainer for independents
The Federal Trade Commission's Funeral Rule has not been substantively updated since 1994. A rewrite is in active progress and expected to land in the next regulatory cycle. The expected changes:
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The retention crisis isn’t about money. It’s about Thursdays.
The NFDA renamed it last year: it's a retention crisis, not a recruitment crisis. Mortuary school enrollment is up 25% since 2020 — but the homes can't hold onto the people who graduate. Owners typica
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Vendor lock-in: how to recognize it before you sign
Funeral industry vendor contracts often contain lock-in mechanisms that aren't obvious until you try to leave. The five most common:
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Why obituaries get printed wrong — and how to catch errors before publication
Obituary errors — misspelled names, wrong dates, missing survivors, wrong photo, name confused with a different decedent — recur in the corpus often enough that they constitute a category, not isolate
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Why we built Vestamere — a founder note
In 2026, we read 195 verbatim Reddit threads from funeral directors. We read 620 family reviews of funeral homes across 30 named establishments. We read 95 LinkedIn posts from the business-strategy si
These articles are part of the open writing Vestamere does on the funeral industry. Sources are documented in each piece. The underlying research corpus is private; the writing is public.