| ecologically
sound burial alternatives |
 |
Legalities - A Personal Account by Les Nash |
|
Acting
As Your Own Funeral
Director
in the State of Florida According to Florida Law you may act as your own funeral director. The definition section for Chapter 382 of the Florida Statutes, which establishes and regulates the department of Vital Statistics, defines Funeral Director as "a licensed funeral director or direct disposer licensed pursuant to chapter 470 or other person who first assumes custody of or effects the final disposition of a dead body or a fetus as described in subsection (5)." If you are reading this you are considering acting as that "other person". And as far as I know there are no other Florida statutes which forbid or limit your ability to be your own funeral director. But, and this is very important, there are a number of regulations which you must deal with (most of them dealing with the Department of Vital Statistics). And if my experience is any indicator, you will be called upon to do a lot of communicating between the various people who will be involved in the burial. In addition to whoever is in charge at your local Department of Vital Statistics, the people you will probably have to talk to might include the Administrative Director and the Director of Nursing at a nursing home or hospital, whoever is in charge of the cemetery or crematorium you intend to use, the attending nurse and/or physician and the people at Hospice if they are involved. Incidentally I recommend that you do involve Hospice if possible. You may also have to physically remove the body from wherever it is located, put it into the casket, and get it into the ground or to the crematoria. In February and March of 2004 I acted as my own funeral director in the death of my mother. As my mother approached death in February we enrolled her in Hospice which allows patients to die in as painless and natural a manner as possible. As part of that process Hospice recommends that family and friends begin thinking about the funeral. By chance I had read an article on "Green Burial" in USA TODAY on my flight to Florida. It mentioned a green burial location in the panhandle of Florida but gave no details. On the internet I located the Glendale Memorial Nature Preserve. After talking to John Wilkerson at the Memorial Nature Preserve I realized I probably wanted to act as my own funeral director. I had no idea how to go about this and over the next two weeks or so I found the experience at times rather stressful. I was often uncertain how various people felt about this "untraditional" burial. But in each case I chose to explain my plans and needs as fully as possible. And once over the initial surprise of seeing someone acting as their own funeral director, most of these people who deal with death day in and day out were surprisingly sympathetic and helpful. Whenever anyone seemed uncomfortable with me acting as my own funeral director, be it the Administrative Director or Director of Nursing at the nursing home who at first seemed reluctant to release my mother's body to me, or the attending physician's secretary who questioned whether I was licensed to hand deliver the copy of my mother's death certificate to the doctor to be completed, I either just mentioned that this had all been cleared with the Department of Vital Statistics or actually had the worried party speak to the person in charge at Vital Statistics. So here are my first two suggestions regarding how to proceed and who to talk to. (1) First make arrangements with whoever is in charge at the burial ground or crematoria you wish to use. Be sure to obtain from them whatever documentation they may have which shows them to be legitimate which must include at least the name and address of the facility and the phone number of whoever is in charge there. Make sure that he or she understands that you will be acting as your own funeral director and is hopefully comfortable with that. (2) Then speak to the person in charge at the Department of Vital Statistics responsible for the county in which the body will have to be moved from hospital, home or nursing home to the place of final disposition. Be prepared to supply whatever information you have about where you plan to inter or cremate the body. Hopefully the person in charge at Vital Statistics will know that you may act as your own funeral director and, as in my case, will help you follow the regulations regarding the disposal of dead bodies. If not, I hope that showing the appropriate statutes to the person in charge will be all that is necessary to get their help. In my case the person in charge at Vital Statistics was extremely helpful. However since she was unfamiliar with the process of working with someone acting as his or her own funeral director I think you may have the same sort of situation to deal with. 3. The Vital Statistics person should be able to explain the Burial Transit Permit and Application to you, which is issued there. It is needed to transport the body from where ever death occurred (home, hospital, nursing home etc.) to wherever the body will be buried or cremated. In my case I was given the form which serves as both the application and the permit, and assigned an identification number. I need to explain however that I am not sure this is standard procedure. As best I can understand, the funeral directors themselves already have the blank application forms which they fill out themselves and to which they either assign ID numbers or which already have numbers. I thought from reading the statutes that the vital statistics clerk would supply the forms to the funeral directors as needed. But evidently that is not the case. The complicating problem is that you need to get the Burial Transit Permit from Vital Statistics to move the body, which most nursing homes etc expect you to do in a matter of hours. But Vital Statistics is only open during business hours. So what happens at night or on weekends? It seems likely that to deal with this, Vital Statistics gives the forms in advance to all funeral directors. So if you can get them to do the same for you that is best. If not I don't know what you do if death occurs out of office hours. Ask the Clerk at Vital Statistics. I think there may be some way to notify the State or County Medical Examiner who is always available. 4. At this point you also need to make casket arrangements. You can not wait until after the death to have a casket supplied because you only have a short amount of time to pick up the body, get it in the casket and to its final disposition. You really need to think about the logistics of this. What kind of a vehicle do you plan to use? Is there a gurney of some sort at the nursing home or hospital for moving the body from the room to the vehicle? Where and when do you plan to put the body in the casket? Who is going to dress the body? How will it be dressed? You need to plan as much of this as possible, and as difficult as it may be, discuss it with other people who will be involved. People at the nursing home will want to know if you plan to wheel a casket into the room and put the body in it. They will want to know if you plan to put the body in the back of a pick-up truck. You may run into some troubles here and the most I can advise is that you try to be sensitive to the feelings of others and don't be afraid to quietly ask them to be sensitive to your feelings. In my case I came to realize that no one really dies alone. Society is concerned with the death of one of it's members. Others are always involved: nurses, doctors, home health aids, administrators, friends, companions etc. And they all have various ideas about how to handle death, down to what sort of vehicle is appropriate for transporting a body; so be prepared to deal with these rather sensitive social issues. If you have spoken to all the people involved, you have your casket and the Application for Burial Transit Permit, then you are in pretty good shape and you just have to await the inevitable. When that occurs you will have a whole new set of problems. After the person's death you have several things to do: 5. You have to get the person in the casket and moved to the funeral ground. Hopefully you have discussed this with others and have arranged the logistics of moving the body, and since you already have the Burial Transit Permit and Application you can go ahead and move the body if Vital Statistic is closed; or if it is open you can go there and get the clerk to sign the Permit. I think this is more or less of a formality at this point and whether it is signed before moving the body or soon after may not matter. Still as I understand it, legally it is supposed to be signed before moving the body so you probably will want to discuss this before hand with the clerk. Incidentally the Burial Transit Permit has three different pages. They are similar at the top but at the bottom differ for the transporter; vital statistics clerk, and person in charge at the crematoria or burial site. The clerk at Vital Statistic has hopefully explained those differences to you and helped you fill out what is needed. You will have to get the signature of the person in charge of the final disposition site and one of you will have to get his portion of the Burial Transit Permit back to vital statistics. 6. When you do go to Vital Statistics after the death, you need two things. You need the necessary biographical information for filling out the Death Certificate. Plus you need the Death Report or Face Page from the nursing home. The Death Report is not the Death Certificate. The Death Certificate is the Vital Statistics form which will be kept on file by the state and is the official registration of death. I will tell you more about that in a minute; The Death Report is supplied by the doctor or nurse in attendance at the death. In our case that was the Hospice Nurse. But we were also given the Face Page to our mother's nursing home file. It included her admission date and information like that plus information about her death. I think it was signed by the nurse on duty that night. You need something of this type to give to the clerk at Vital Statistics to document that there has actually been a death. It is a good idea to find out what sort of biographical information you need for the clerk to fill out the Death Certificate since it asks for stuff like the middle name of the deceased's father. 7. When you go to the Vital Statistics office after the death with the necessary biographical information and the Death Report you will be given The Death Certificate already filled out except for the portion the attending physician is concerned with. You will need to take this to the physician who fills out the cause of death section and signs the Certificate which then has to be returned to the Vital Statistics office. This is probably the most important document to the vital statistics clerk. It is her primary job to see to it that it is properly filled out and kept on file in her office and in the central office in Tallahassee. It is best to keep that in mind when dealing with the clerk. This Certificate is her job. The other small irritation I ran into here is that the doctor's nurse to whom I took the Death Certificate was not used to seeing a family member rather than a funeral director with the document. There was a sort of suggestion on her part that I was not authorized to have the document. I suggested she call the clerk at vital statistics and although she didn't, everything calmed down. So as I have suggested before, the clerk at Vital Statistics can be a lot of help to you in awkward situations. 8. When you took the body to its final resting place you should have also gotten the Burial Transit Permit and Application signed on the appropriate page by the person in charge of the facility. There is also a page for you to fill out in the same document. You now take this document and the signed Death Certificate to the Clerk at Vital Statistics and you are done. Somewhere along side this rather complicated beaureaucratic process I hope you managed to have a satisfying burial or cremation. We did. And as Burials go I think it was the right thing to do. As John will tell you, the research suggests that being as involved as possible in this process is good for you and helps in the grieving process. I don't really know about all that. Two months later I still have long moments of utter blankness when I think of my mother's death. But I guess that is normal. Les Nash May 17, 2004 |