From online banking to social networks, it seems everything these days is being done online. In order to take part in almost any virtual activity, an individual has to create an online account. This raises an important question, what happens to all of these accounts when the individual dies?
BANKING & OTHER FINANCIALLY RELATED ACCOUNTS:
As for online banking and financial accounts, only the deceased person’s executor may be granted access. The executor or administrator should contact the necessary companies to inform them about the death of the user of the accounts, which will allow for access to the account, and money or property to be distributed to those who are entitled to it.
SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS:
Social media networks each have their own policies.
Facebook does not grant access to a deceased person’s account. Instead, FaceBook has a memorial status that turns the individual’s user page to a memorial page. Upon status change, friends can view and post their condolences or sympathy messages on the wall. The memorial page can also be customized by close relatives upon approval by Facebook, but certain features like joining groups and posting status updates are disabled in this state. Should the family wish to have the page taken down and the account deleted, a request to FaceBook accompanied by a copy of the death certificate is required. To learn more about how to memorialize accounts, please read this FaceBook Blog article: http://www.facebook.com/blog.php?post=163091042130.
Twitter requests that family members notify them when a user passes away so that they can remove the account and assist family memebers in saving a backup of their public Tweets. The family will be asked to provide their own name and contact information, including email address, as well as the relationship to the deceased user, the username of the twitter account and a link to an obituary or news article verifying the death. Just as with FaceBook, Twitter cannot allow access to the account or disclose other non-public information regarding the account of a deceased user. For more on the process of notifying Twitter of a deceased user, please visit the Twitter support page: http://support.twitter.com/articles/87894-how-to-contact-twitter-about-a-deceased-user.
LinkedIn requires the completion of the “Verification of Death Form” that can be found as a document on the following LinkedIn answers page: https://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2842/related/1. The email address attached to the deceased user’s account is required. The account will be deactivated upon verification.
YouTube also has a form that can be filled out to request access to a deceased user’s account. They require the deceased’s YouTube account name, death certificate, and a document with power of attorney over the YouTube account. The parent of the deceased may submit a birth certificate of the deceased in lieu of the power of attorney. It takes approximately thirty days for YouTube to process and validate the documents and grant access. YouTube information can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=94458
EMAIL:
For email accounts, each service provider has its own policies and protocols dealing with the death of an account user. Gmail and Hotmail, for example, grant the next of kin access to the account upon submission of necessary documents: proof of death and proof of lawful authorization to access the accounts of the deceased. Please note that Hotmail will automatically delete accounts that are inactive for a year.
Yahoo! mail, on the other hand, does not grant access to anyone except the actual user, unless it is court-ordered. Upon receipt of a death notification, Yahoo! will immediately delete the corresponding accounts.
This blog entry was created to help make the process of accessing, managing and closing the deceased user’s online accounts as simple as possible for family members. If we have missed any other websites or social networks, please let us know and we will be sure to add that information.
You may have heard of Freedom riders or Patriot Guard Riders. They are a group of motorcycle riders that go to military funerals to shield mourners from protesters.
Most of the time, the Freedom Riders are protecting and sheilding families from the Westboro Baptist Church Protesters, which is an organization that was formed by a preacher Fred Phelps. The Westboro Baptist Church Protesters believe that the deaths of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq were and are caused by America’s tolerance of homosexuality. They claim that the demise of these war heroes is God’s punishment.
In addition to protesting at military funerals, the Westboro group goes to political gatherings and commencement ceremonies, flashing their signs and shouting their slogans. They travel all around the country to picket at funerals, disrupting the ceremonies and harassing the bereaved.
The Freedom Riders began attending funerals as a response to the Westboro Baptist Church protests. The Riders attend funerals to protect the family, friends and dignity of the fallen soldier during their greiving time and for the funeral process.
The Freedom Riders physically block out the view and noise of the protesters by revving the engines of their motorcycles, singing patriotic pieces and holding/raising American flags.
Although generally speaking, the Riders believe in freedom of speech, they disagree with the protests, as a funeral is not the right place to make their religious statement. This group is based on the belief that a fallen soldiers deservs to be recognized and honored for their sacrifices and that the protests conducted by Phelps and his church are tarnishing the memories of these heroes.
This shared belief is the reason why the Patriot Guard Riders came to be. Nowadays, the group not only attends funerals but also welcomes returning troops, does volunteer work at veteran homes, and visits wounded service members of the armed forces.
As a the only New Hampshire funeral home approved by the Green Burial Council, we are looking forward to The National Geographic special documentary that will offer an explanation of eco-friendly burial alternatives. This documentary will show how rituals have evolved through time, and feature a behind the scenes look at an eco-friendly green burial, filming the deceased person as he or she is cared for by the family, prepared for burial and then peacefully laid to rest.
“As the world becomes more environmentally conscious it is important to highlight alternative options to the wider community,” states Murray Wilkinson, “These methods differ from those in other parts of the world. To this end our film will also feature expert analysis from leading anthropologists and academics.”
The National Geographic is respectfully requesting the participation of recently bereaved families to help in this special documentary. They hope the film will help those left behind cope during a time of stress and grief, and that the film will also shed light on how different people from all over the world deal with death.
If any of our readers are interested in participating in this documentary, they are encouraged to call Murray Wilkinson of the National Geographic by emailing murray.wilkinson@beyond.com.au.
Phaneuf Funeral Homes & Crematorium is the only funeral home in NH to offer a green burial package approved by the Green Burial Council, a non-profit organization. For such arrangements, formaldehyde-based embalming is prohibited, as is the use of metal or hardwood caskets. This package provides everything necessary for a burial within a green cemetery, conventional cemetery, or in certain instances, on private property. Although not included in this package, some cemeteries require the use of an outer burial container. For more information on the Green Burial Package, visit the following link: http://www.phaneuf.net/_mgxroot/page_10875.php
Although most states do not have restrictions on funeral homes serving food, there are five that do, including Connecticut and Massachusetts. A Senator in Massachusetts wants to change the law for that state and has reintroduced a bill that seeks to overturn a law that prohibits funeral homes from “providing, handling or serving any food or liquid refreshments in connection with a burial or funeral”.
This bill has stirred up quite a bit of controversy, as many people have stated opinions online expressing their feelings against the concept of food at funeral homes. However, there are certainly benefits to families that want or need food services at a funeral. It specifically helps with families who are traveling distances for the service, saving them from having to go to multiple locations or seeking out a place to have nourishment. It also gives family/friends a place to gather after the service, which is particularly helpful if family does not have a home large enough to accommodate a large number of guests for a meal.
In New Hampshire, food may be served in funeral homes, providing a benefit to families that may want or need this service. We are currently making efforts to modify rooms to accommodate catering. We will keep you updated on our progress.
We’d love to hear your opinions on whether you feel food belongs in a funeral home. Please post your comments.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court made a ruling that prohibiting the Westboro Baptist Church from protesting at funerals is against the first amendment right to “freedom of speech”.
This ruling came as a disappointment to many that feel the organization’s actions are a form of hate-speech that should not be considered protected under the first amendment right. However, the ruling is very much in line with many earlier court decisions that said the First Amendment exists to protect debate on free expression, no matter how distasteful.
The Westboro Baptist Church was pleased with the ruling and since has vowed to quadruple the number of protests at military funerals around the country. Members of this organization have held signs at hundreds of funerals with messages such as “Thank God for dead soldiers” and “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11″.
Although the ruling will not prohibit these funeral protests, the state of NH, as well as 43 other states, has restrictions on such actions. NH State law RSA 644:2-b states that it shall be unlawful for any person to engage in picketing or other protest activities at any location at which a funeral is held, within one hour prior to the commencement, until one hour following the cessation of any funeral. It also restricts any protesting within 150 feet of the route to or from the cemetery and disturbance of the peace or good order during a funeral, memorial service or ceremony.
Experts in New Hampshire state that the NH law will not be affected by the Supreme Court ruling. In addition, the Patriot Guard Riders, a group that has been formed to protect families from protests, will continue to do so when invited from the family.
We are very interested in hearing your opinion on this ruling and how you think it may affect funerals in NH.
Less than 40 years ago, only 5% of funeral directors in the United States were women, and today that number hovers around 43%. The ratio of male to female students in mortuary science schools has rapidly shifted as well, from 35% in 1995 to a current rate of around 60%.
Interestingly enough, women historically played a large part in traditional death care practices. In ancient Greece, women were responsible for dressing, washing and anointing the body. In the ancient Hebrew traditions, washing and dressing the dead was considered unclean work and thus the task was delegated to women.
Colonial women were also responsible for preparing the dead for burial as it was considered to be a household task, but this tradition shifted around the time of the Civil War, when Northern soldiers were dying on Southern soil, and needed preservation in order to be sent home to be viewed by the families. Previously, Americans had no knowledge of embalming practices so this practice spread rapidly as families arranged to have their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons shipped home from the battlefields of the South.
This shift in funeral practice marked the emergence of the American funeral industry, and while the funeral industry was one of the few trades that welcomed women, it was primarily dominated by educated white men. However, during the 20th century, a Spanish nurse named Lina D. Odou studied embalming in Switzerland, and in 1899 opened an embalming school for women in the United States, graduating 10 students in her first class.
There were some setbacks to women in the American funeral industry in the 1950’s as women were generally regarded as ‘second-class citizens’ in the business world and were restricted to jobs such as homemaker, nurse or teacher, unless of course the woman was raised in a family-owned funeral home.
Like all industries, the feminist movement in the 1970’s and 1980’s had an impact on the American funeral industry, providing opportunities as women campaigned against cultural and political inequities, breaking the ‘glass ceiling’ that held back previous generations.
Today, the Funeral Science program at Milwaukee Technical College notes that nearly 75% of their students are female. At Phaneuf Funeral Homes, we are proud to have three female funeral directors and one female funeral apprentice on our staff.
Recently I was interviewed by Bart Miller for an article in The Bulletin of Selected Independent Funeral Homes regarding our use of technology. We have seen more change in the last five years than in the previous fifty and we have always been early adopters in terms of technology because once you fall behind, it can be very difficult to catch up. Soon after 1995, when we started our cremation society, we used traditional advertising and direct mail, and as the internet became more popular, we stepped up to the plate by posting our prices online and setting up an economical ecommerce business. This allowed us to service families across New Hampshire.
Over the years, we have found that not only are people willing to make online arrangements, in many cases, they prefer it. People patronize cremation societies for all kinds of reasons, and some appreciate the convenience of making arrangements in their own home without outside pressure. (We still make arrangements the traditional way, of course.)
Regularly, I get calls from funeral directors who see our website, our advanced ecommerce capability, and our solid social media presence, all working together in powerful symbiosis. They are overwhelmed and say they couldn’t do what we’ve done, and I explain that our site has been evolving over 15 years.
The vast majority of funeral home websites do not display price lists, so it would be a significant undertaking to enable ecommerce. It is critical to adopt the mindset that the website is an extension of the arrangement office: everything provided in the office should be online. Once the directors have this mindset, they don’t fear that their competition can see their prices. In all truth, the competition already knows your prices, so if you can’t maintain transparency in your pricing and you are unable to explain it to your customers, you have a serious problem. When I think of my online activity, if I am shopping and I see ‘call for pricing’, it makes me suspicious and I am uncomfortable with this lack of transparency. Online consumers shopping for funeral or cremation services are no different than any other.
More and more of our business is becoming technologically embedded and automated and we are excited about this convergence. For example, we have a new funeral home software package which replaced ten stand-alone programs. Now that everything is in one place, transactions are much smoother and quicker, functioning efficiently with less staff and significantly reducing the potential for human error.
We recently hired a director of social media and business development, who, in addition to traditional marketing, maintains our website, social media presence, search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. With the power of the internet, people are searching for terms like ‘low cost cremation’ and ‘green burials’ and it is critical that we maintain a presence there. I am asked frequently why we have a social media presence, and one example that came up the other day was that we had an estate attorney present a seminar on preplanning. Shortly before the seminar, we posted on Facebook and Twitter that we had a few seats available and sure enough, some of our followers called us to sign up. Had we not been using social media, we would have missed these folks.
What is a green burial?
A green burial is done with the goal of returning the body to the earth so that it can be naturally recycled through uninhibited decomposition; green burials are intended as economically sustainable alternatives to traditional funeral practices. In most cases, the body is not embalmed and is placed in a biodegradable container (for example, willow), then interred directly in a grave without a concrete liner.
The first green cemetery, Ramsey Creek, was opened in 1998 by Billy Campbell in South Carolina. Since then, an emerging new movement for simpler, more environmentally friendly has resulted in a variety of alternatives to traditional funeral practices.
Cremation is also considered a type of green burial, because although energy is consumed to burn the body, its footprint is so small and its byproducts so marginal that it is generally accepted as a green burial practice.
Why a green burial?
There are over 22,000 cemeteries in the United States alone, and each year we bury the following with our traditional funeral practices:
Caskets – 30 million feet of hardwood, 90,272 tons of steel, and 2,700 tons of copper/bronze.
Vaults – 14,000 tons of steel and 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete
Embalming fluid – 827,060 gallons
Clearly, over time these practices will prove to be unsustainable as more and more land is consumed to create cemeteries and more and more of material resources, such as woods and metals are buried in the ground along with our dead.
Cost is also a factor, considering the average cost for a traditional funeral is approximately $6500 to $8000. Green burials cost substantially less, especially if the body is to be cremated and the family decides spreads the ashes spread instead of interring the body. We have the only green burial offering in the state of New Hampshire that approved by the Green Burial Council.
Are There Green Alternatives to Interment? In addition to simple interment or cremation, there are a number of creative alternatives for cremated remains as well. For example, one company, Celestis, can send a lipstick-sized container of cremated remains into space. They offer several choices for the containers, including orbit with return, release into the orbit, lunar release, or release into deep space.
Eternal Reefs incorporates cremated remains into an environmentally safe cement mixture, using the mixture to create artificial reef formations that support new marine habitats for fish and other sea creatures. They have placed over 300 memorial reefs throughout the east coast and expect them to last approximately 500 years.
The Future of Green Burials As the green burial movement continues to gain popularity, there are more and more green cemeteries appearing in the United States. Since 1998, the number of green cemeteries has gone from 1 to 12, operating in 10 states with 4 more are under development. We have seen an exponential increase over the last few years in green burials at our facilities, so it is certainly clear to us that the green burial movement is here to stay.
The baby boomer generation has caused a seismic shift in the funeral industry in the last decade. Overall, there has been a large decrease in emphasis on body-centric activities and a resulting shift in focus towards memorial services that honor the life of the deceased person instead. Personalization of the funeral services to reflect the preferences and hobbies of the person is pervasive: instead of ‘amazing grace’ and ‘swing low sweet chariot’ playing in the funeral home, attendees at a baby boomer funeral would be more likely to hear ‘stairway to heaven’, ‘imagine’ or ‘into the mystic’. And instead of a black hearse, the procession could just as easily be led by a motorcycle, a team of horses, or a covered wagon.
The baby boomer generation includes people who were born from1946 to 1965, approximately 78 million Americans and roughly 28% of our total current population. Exactly as they challenged, rejected, and reshaped their parents’ traditional roles in their own lives with regards to self-identity, gender, sex, marriage, parenting and retirement, they are doing exactly the same in their deaths. As a result, we are seeing less and less formulaic, traditional funerals and finding ourselves in roles that are more grounded in facilitating, event planning and organization, and above all, providing hospitality and comfort. Currently, it is estimated that only 20% of modern funerals are about body disposition and the remaining 80% of the funeral is to provide a healing experience for the surviving family.
Baby boomers also have a lot more options available to them for their funerals, mostly as a result of 1984 legislation which required funeral directors to unbundle their services and provide price lists, allowing for completely customized funerals. Some of the more popular personalization trends include video tributes, slideshows, and displaying personal memorabilia such as musical instruments, sports equipment, etc. In a recent service we did, the family brought their loved one’s Harley Davidson motorcycle right into our funeral chapel, which brought fond memories to those who remembered him as an avid motorcyclist.
For the actual disposition of the body, cremation seems to be by far the most popular choice among baby boomers and families often scatter the ashes in the person’s favorite spot, for example at sea. However, many baby boomers are choosing non-traditional and unusual destinations for their cremated ashes, such as being made into jewelry, or sent into space. Non-traditional, green burials are also gaining popularity among baby boomers, with such choices as no-embalming techniques, eco-friendly cemeteries, underwater reef memorials, and caskets and shrouds made out of fully biodegradable materials.
At the end of the day, exactly as the baby boomers were a defining, rule-changing generation in life, so are they in their deaths; as a result, we are seeing this clearly reflected by the significant changes in our industry.
In October, Wal-Mart began selling caskets on its website (see fox new story at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,570111,00.html). What this will mean for family-owned funeral homes long term is unknown. But my sense is that most grieving families will not turn to Wal-Mart for their casket needs. While retail outlets selling caskets in lieu of local funeral homes sounds like big news, it’s really nothing new. Costco has been selling caskets in a number of its stores for years. In addition, numerous “casket stores” have opened (and closed) over the last ten years throughout the country with the hopes of getting a piece of the traditional funeral pie. On-line stores are also marketing caskets using names like “Best Price Casket”, “Casket Gallery” and “Casket Express”. Industry experts estimate that the number of caskets purchased outside of traditional funerals homes is less than 3% of all caskets sold per year.
So why is the Wal-Mart play into the caskets market making such headlines in the media and in funeral service circles? Simply because of the size of Wal-Mart and its influence on the buying patters of middle America. Looking at Wal-Mart’s casket pricing, there is definitely some savings to the consumer; generally a few hundred dollars or so. I am not trying to minimize the savings, especially for families who have limited funds, but to delay the wake or service for several days waiting for Federal Express (yes, that’s how they get delivered) to bring the casket to the funeral home in many cases will not justify the savings.
If Wal-Mart caskets catch on, the funeral industry will simply lower its price on caskets and raise its service charge, mitigating the casket store advantage. While this may sound underhanded, it’s an economic reality of business. Funeral homes charge for two basic categories for a funeral. The first is the service of the funeral home to do things like pick up the deceased, embalm, renting the funeral home for the visitation, use of the hearse and involvement in the ceremony. The second category is merchandise – the casket, cemetery vault, printed items such as memorial cards and sign in books. Let’s say a typical funeral home charges $4,000 for all the components of their service for a full traditional funeral. And the funeral homes sells 20 caskets ranging from $900 to $5,000 with an average sale of $2,000. So on average, the funeral home will generate $6,000 in revenue (not profit) from the average traditional funeral. Funeral homes set their prices for both services and merchandise based on their cost of doing business so they can cover personnel fees, building expenses, taxes and other expenses, and factoring in a profit margin – hopefully around 10%. If a funeral home starts loosing its caskets sales to outside companies like Wal-Mart, then the firm will simply adjust it’s pricing. In our example above, the firm may bump its service charge to $4,500 and lower its caskets by $500 with the new average sales being $1,500. At the end of the day, the funeral is still $6,000 to the consumer. The thing that makes the Wal-Mart decision bad for funeral service, is that if funeral homes raise their service charges, consumers will have to pay it. Allowing funeral homes to move some of its profit onto the casket provides consumers the ability to still purchase caskets in a a wide range of prices. But if firms have to recoup most of its profits from their services, funeral prices nationwide will increase, which is not in the best interest of consumers or the industry.
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