Undertaken With Love

Photo of California State Capitol by Willem van Bergen

This state's status: California does not restrict the right of families to care for their own dead.

However, according to Karen Leonard of the Redwood Funeral Society and Jerrigrace Lyons of Final Passages, both of Sonoma, obstacles are being placed in the way of home funerals nonetheless, making the process a test of patience.

“In the beginning anyone could go to the Department of Health and get permits for death certificates. In fact, I used to have a stack of them,” Leonard recalls. “As time went on, and people actually began to do this, changes were made through the lobbying of the California funeral directors. Now a family caring for its own dead has to wait until after a death to get the form.”

More recently, California has placed its death certificate and final disposition permits online, a process that requires a code/password for access. If you have a funeral director’s license, you gain immediate access to the system, known as EDRS (Electronic Death Registry System).  A family serving as its own funeral director can't log on at all.

“I did go to Sacramento to a public meeting held by the Department of Consumer Affairs' Funeral Program to ask if families could get a guest pass to use the EDRS when someone dies,” says Lyons. “They said no, they would have to use the old hardcopy paper form for the death certificate. This makes it more difficult to complete paperwork because most people don't have a typewriter anymore or find it difficult to print neatly in the boxes without making a mistake.”

A friend or relative can fill out and file the paperwork as long as they are legally in charge by order of authority or Advanced Health Care Directive Proxy. “That person should have their name on the death certificate as both the informant and on the line that says name of funeral director,” Lyons advises.

Some counties provide more assistance with the paperwork than others.

“In Sonoma it is fairly easy for a family to get help at the Office of Vital Records, but it still takes time, patience and a willingness to persevere, especially if mistakes are made,” Lyons says. “Plus we now have to make an appointment to file the completed paperwork so that the staff can enter the information into EDRS.”

To ease the process, Lyons’ nonprofit has written a guidebook, Creating Home Funerals,"  that not only tells how to prepare, preserve a body and create home funeral arrangements, but how to fill out and file the Death Certificate and The Application and
Permit for Disposition of Human Remains in the state of California.

Since these forms are no longer provided to families before a death occurs, and since they have to be completed without crossed-out errors and other corrections, the guidebook now includes samples of the forms so that the families can practice completing them in advance of the death.

“I did have a friend just recently file paperwork in Marin County and he said that the Vital Records personnel there were very helpful and kind. I don't know that this would always be the case,” says Lyons. “I have heard that there is sometimes resistance in some other counties in California where home funerals are not a common practice.

“I find in general that most authorities, coroner detectives, vital records employees, hospital and hospice staff, don't know the laws for home funerals, so a family would want to be well informed of the laws to educate people along their journey and help ease the way for others.”

Although a family can legally transport a body before filing paperwork with Vital Records as long as they don't cross county lines, in cases involving a coroner, the coroner still may require that the death certificate and disposition permit be filed before the family assumes custody at the end of the investigation.

“Not only does this make it more difficult for people, it adds another burden of delay when the local public health department is closed over the weekend or for holidays,” Leonard observes.

Once a family has properly filled out and filed the death certificate and final disposition permit, they can transport the body to any county or state for burial or cremation.

How about home burials?

“I have yet to help any family establish a new home burial site,” says Lyons. “I have, however, helped a few families who buried their loved one on their own land in an old established family plot. Currently I am working on this project with a friend who wants to establish a family plot so we can determine what steps it would take to accomplish this.”

Far less common than home funerals are home cremations, but California has a law waiting:

“To cremate someone yourself, you have to get a permit from the fire department. That’s not ever going to happen,” says Leonard. “I actually had someone call me and ask me about this. You can bury a family member on your property, but the red tape they require for this would take years to accomplish and cost a lot of money—and a neighbor could stop you just by refusing to give you written permission.”

One of the most economically challenging parts of carrying out a home funeral involving cremation is finding a crematorium that will only charge for the cost of cremation. Most of them want to charge a minimum overhead fee starting at around $900 and going up to $1500 even if a family has done all of the arrangements themselves, including driving the deceased to the crematorium with the disposition papers in hand. According to Lyons, the cost should be around $300 plus the cost of a cardboard cremation casket ($40 to $60 at most).

“We have crematoriums in both Sonoma and Marin Counties who only charge the family for the cost of cremation ($250-$300),” Lyons says, “if the family files their documents correctly and brings their deceased loved one to them in a cardboard, pine or some other kind of combustible casket.”

Searchable Online General Statutes

California Codes and Statutes

Resources Specific to Funeral Law

Cemetery and Funeral Board

Department of Health Services

Please help us develop this section by emailing us with books or online sources specifically related to funeral law in California.

In general, regulations promulgated by departments of health, such as required procedures in filing death certificates, must be followed by families caring for their own dead, while regulations promulgated by funeral service regulatory boards are binding only on funeral providers (but may affect home funerals indirectly to the extent that a family chooses to engage the limited services of licensed providers or in a few states is required to do so).

Resources Specific to Home Funeral Laws

Please help us develop this section by emailing us with books or online sources specifically related to home funerals in California. Or if there is none, write a summary document regarding your findings to share here! (See North Carolina and South Carolina for an example.)

Organizations and Individuals

Final Passages is a not-for-profit home funeral training and information organization that is headquartered in Sebastopol, Calif. Its founder is Jerrigrace Lyons, who is a source of information regarding funeral laws in California affecting home funerals.

Nancy Jewel Poer pioneered support for home deaths in the community, which she has done for more than 25 years as "threshold work." She resides in the greater Sacramento area.

Funeral Consumers Alliance chapters (external link). Because FCA chapters are composed of volunteers, their expertise and experience related to home funeral laws vary considerably from one to the next. All of them, however, welcome home funeral practitioners and advocates and are eager to learn from them. If you find that you are accumulating knowledge that is lacking in your closest chapter, why don't you volunteer to be its resource for funeral consumers on home funeral laws in your state?

Please help us develop this section by emailing us with the names of organizations and individuals that serve as noncommercial resources to families serving as their own funeral directors in California. Please include contact information (phone, website, email).