How Do You Inter Ashes in the US, and What Does It Cost?

Detailed Explanation

This page covers how interring ashes works in the United States. For the options in general (niches, memorial gardens, family graves and ashes plots) and how they compare, see how do you inter ashes, and what does it cost.

There's no federal law requiring cremated remains to be interred. Families can keep them, scatter them (subject to state and local rules, and the landowner's permission), or place them in a cemetery. Cemeteries themselves are regulated by the states, and the rules vary a lot. Some states license most cemeteries; others exempt religious, municipal or family cemeteries from much of their oversight.

The costs you'll usually see

The FTC's guidance on buying a cemetery site sets out the typical structure. If you plan to put cremated remains in a columbarium or mausoleum, you can expect to buy the space and pay opening and closing fees, plus endowment care and other charges. In practice a cemetery bill for ashes is usually made up of:

• The space itself: a niche, an urn plot, or nothing extra if the ashes go into a family grave you already hold.
• Opening and closing (interment) fee: the FTC notes these are usually hundreds of dollars for a grave.
• Endowment or perpetual care: a one-time fee toward long-term upkeep, sometimes included in the price and sometimes not. California, for example, requires licensed cemeteries to collect endowment care fees into a trust.
• An urn vault or liner, if the cemetery requires one for in-ground burial.
• A marker, niche plate or inscription, and often a setting fee.

Niche and urn plot prices vary widely by region and cemetery, commonly from several hundred to several thousand dollars, with prime positions in large urban cemeteries costing more. These are rough typical figures, not quotes. Ask each cemetery for a written, itemized price including every fee.

Why the Funeral Rule may not help

A funeral home must give you a written general price list under the FTC Funeral Rule, but the FTC says the rule doesn't cover cemeteries and mausoleums unless they sell both funeral goods and funeral services. So when you're dealing with a standalone cemetery, federal price-list protections generally don't apply. Protections come instead from state law, which varies. Two examples:

• California: the Cemetery and Funeral Bureau licenses cemeteries and publishes a consumer guide. It says licensed cemeteries must give you a written copy of their maintenance standards if you ask, and that you don't have to buy a required outer burial container from the cemetery itself.
• New York: the Department of State's Division of Cemeteries oversees about 1,700 not-for-profit cemeteries and takes complaints about them.

If a problem arises, the state cemetery regulator (or, where there isn't one, the state attorney general's consumer protection office) is usually the place to start.

VA national cemeteries for veterans

For eligible veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs is often the lowest-cost route. In a VA national cemetery, eligible families receive at no cost a gravesite or columbarium niche, opening and closing, perpetual care, a government headstone, marker or niche marker, a burial flag and a Presidential Memorial Certificate. The VA says cremated remains are buried or inurned in the same manner and with the same honors as casketed remains.

Spouses and eligible dependents can be interred with the veteran, even if they die first. Eligibility depends on service and discharge, so the VA offers a pre-need eligibility determination. For a veteran whose ashes go to a private cemetery, the VA can provide a headstone, marker or medallion, but not the plot or niche itself, and that private-cemetery marker benefit doesn't extend to spouses and dependents. Many states also run their own veterans cemeteries with their own rules.

Things to Consider

• Ask for every fee in writing. Opening and closing, endowment care, vault, marker and setting fees can add up to more than the niche itself.
• Check eligibility for a VA or state veterans cemetery before buying private space, if the person who died served.
• Ask about the cemetery's rules on urns and vaults before buying an urn, since size and material requirements differ.
• Check who regulates the cemetery. A religious or municipal cemetery may fall outside your state's licensing, which affects where you'd take a complaint.
• Consider placement in a family grave. Many cemeteries allow cremated remains to be added to an existing plot, often for just an interment fee.

Common Mistakes

• Assuming the Funeral Rule covers the cemetery. It usually doesn't, so price lists and itemization aren't guaranteed by federal law.
• Overlooking endowment care and vault fees. They're often quoted separately from the niche or plot.
• Missing veterans' benefits. Families sometimes buy private space without realizing a national cemetery place was available at no cost.
• Assuming one state's rules apply elsewhere. Cemetery and scattering rules differ from state to state.