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Evaluating Your Third-Party Crematory Is Not Optional

Source: NFDA’s Memorial Business Journal, January 23, 2025

After reading our report on the 2024 NFDA Business Practices Study in last week’s edition of the Memorial Business Journal, Mike Nicodemus, NFDA vice president of cremation services, felt compelled to take a few minutes to respond to some of the statistics in the article. Truth be told, when we asked him for comment, Nicodemus was at the Funeral Directors Association of Kentucky’s Mid-Winter Conference in Lexington giving a presentation on this very topic. Upon returning home, he delved into the report. Nicodemus immediately focused on the question dealing with funeral homes using third party crematories. Here’s a quick refresher.

Of respondents who use a third-party crematory:

• 28.2% inspect their provider’s facility on a monthly (or more) basis, down from 32.5% and 34.5%, respectively, in 2022 and 2019.

• 6% of respondents inspect their third party crematory quarterly, the same as in 2022.

• 7.4% inspect their crematory once a year, also down from 7.5% in 2022 and 8.6% in 2019.

• 43.6% of respondents inspect their third-party crematories “sporadically,” which is up from 31% in 2022 and 32.3% in 2019.

• 7.4% only inspect the facility which compares with 8.5% in 2022 and 5.9% in 2019.

There was one piece of good news – the number of respondents who have never inspected their facility (7.4%) is down considerably from 14.5% and 11.4%, respectively, in 2022 and 2019. “I’m not sure how many funeral homes that use a third-party crematory realize how serious it is that they take an hour of their time twice a year, unannounced, to check things out and see how things are being run and how the facility looks, especially when you have no cremations on the schedule,” said Nicodemus. “If you ever have to stand before a judge and jury because your third-party crematory made a huge mistake and cremated the wrong body, and the attorney asks to see your employee handbook and inspection schedule but you stand there and tell him you don’t have either, you could be involved in a runaway verdict from the jury.”

Taking exception with the 43.6% of respondents who said they inspect their third-party facility “sporadically,” Nicodemus said, “I’d love to see that answer given under oath and when the attorney asks, ‘Tell me what you mean by sporadically.’"

“If you don’t have any documentation to support that number, the attorney will shoot holes in it and shout out attorneys’ favorite line, ‘If it’s not in writing, it didn’t happen.’” Nicodemus pointed out that the lead attorney in the Tri-State Crematory debacle 23 years ago said, “Document everything. The more documentation you have the less attractive a defendant you will make.” He added: “I don’t care how long you and your third party have been doing business together or that you haven’t had any issues since you started using them, it can no longer be business as usual sealed with a handshake. It’s too litigious today.” Commenting on the 7.4% of respondents who said they only inspected their third-party crematory when they first started using them, Nicodemus said they will be “easy prey for an attorney, even one who just graduated from law school and is trying their first case, let alone a seasoned veteran."

“Without question, 100 percent of funeral homes that use a third party should be conducting inspections,” Nicodemus said. “Funeral homes have a responsibility to practice due diligence, which is a review and inspection of a crematory’s internal operating procedures to ensure that the crematory handles cremations in compliance with established policies and procedures.”

Another point that raised Nicodemus’ brow was that only about two-thirds of respondents (62.9%) work at or own firms where they have a crematory operator’s manual and know where it is kept. However, 10.1% know they have a manual but do not know where it is kept, 4.4% said they do not have a manual, and 22.6% are unsure – numbers on par with the previous studies.

Nicodemus, in his experience as an expert witness, said that if you don’t inspect your third-party crematory or have a crematory operator’s manual, you would most likely be considered negligent. “It shows you just don’t care,” he continued.

“If you don’t believe that inspecting your third-party crematory is important, you had better rethink that. Failure to use due diligence at this point is now deemed irresponsible and negligent by a court of law. Funeral directors can be held accountable for the actions – or inactions – of their third-party crematory if they have not practiced due diligence.

“You may not have had anything to do with what went wrong, but your third party is an extension of your funeral home, and you will be caught in the middle,” he stated. As for the expression that there’s no such thing as bad press, guess again. “You can count on getting plenty of bad press,” said Nicodemus. He emphasized that inspecting your third-party crematory costs you nothing but your time but not inspecting it can cost you plenty.

The study found that only 36% of responding firms said their state requires identification of the decedent prior to cremation. The good news is that this statistic is trending up from 31.5% in 2022 and 27.3% in 2019. However, here’s the bad news. In states in which identification is not required prior to performing a cremation, just 30.5% require it anyway, which is down from 32% in 2022 and 36.1% in 2019. Furthermore, 33.5% of respondents do not require identification of the remains, which is down from 36.5% and 36.6%, respectively, in 2022 and 2019. Nicodemus did not hold back:

“My blood pressure goes up 100 points when I read that in states where identification of a body prior to cremation is not required, only 30.5% require it anyway. How in the world can you cremate without someone identifying the body? Every decedent should be identified by a family member or designee prior to cremation.” Suppose the wrong body was cremated and the funeral home is sued. In court, an attorney will say to you, “Do you mean to tell me that nobody saw or identified this decedent from the time of death until the time of cremation?”

The response might be, “That’s correct.” To which the attorney will reply, “Your job was to cremate the remains of John Doe, and you didn’t even check the identity! Let me ask you a question, ‘Do you just not know any better or do you just not care?”