Undertaken With Love

Photo of Maryland Senate by Willem van Bergen

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

Searchable Online General Statutes

Maryland Code (external link)

Resources Specific to Funeral Law

Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (external link)

State Board of Morticians (external link)

Office of Cemetery Oversight (external link)

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

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 Maryland. Or if there is none, write a summary document regarding your findings to share here! (See North Carolina and South Carolina for examples.)

Organizations and Individuals

Crossings: Caring For Our Own at Death (external link) is a national not-for-profit natural burial and home funeral training and information organization that is headquartered in Takoma Park, Md. Its founder is Elizabeth Knox.

Funeral Consumers Alliance of Maryland and Environs (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 Maryland. Please include contact information (phone, website, email).