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Power of Attorney: It isn’t Necessarily Powerless
By Bill Stalter
I saved this NYT article for a rainy day. Finding Out Your Power of Attorney Is Powerless describes situations where families had a financial institution reject a power of attorney subsequent to the principal becoming incapacitated with dementia or Alzheimer’s. My family had a similar experience recently when my mother-in-law had to be admitted to…
FTC Workshop: The Funeral Rule and Price List Disclosures
By Bill Stalter
In the new era of Zoom meetings, the Federal Trade Commission is holding a “public workshop” on September 7th to get further input on Funeral Rule changes that would require funeral homes to post their price lists on line. The workshop will be televised, and interested parties can watch by using this hyperlink. Several…
Transition Plans and the Client with Dementia: Caregiver Challenges
By Bill Stalter
A recent Guardian article offers excellent advice to caregivers for individuals with dementia. The author, Cynthia Dearborn, shared her experiences about caring for a father with vascular dementia. Cynthia described how her father’s short-term memory became severely impaired, along with his judgment and reasoning skills. I am having a similar experience with a Transition Plans’…
End of Life Forums: Well Intended, but Sometimes Misleading
By Bill Stalter
We find the AgingCare website to be a good source information for end of life planning. The website includes a forum for readers to post questions and offer their experiences. However, readers need to be careful when the forum is used to seek legal help on end of life issues. One such topic thread began…
Missouri SB32: New Teeth for the State Board
By Bill Stalter
One of the weaknesses of Chapter 436, Missouri’s preneed law, is that it provides the State Board few enforcement powers beyond disciplining the preneed seller’s license. There are plenty of examples of preneed sellers obstructing the State Board’s efforts to obtain preneed records. At least one resorted to litigation as a delay tactic. The prospect…
Missouri SB32: The Preneed Audit Fund
By Bill Stalter
With this post we will examine the new “Preneed Audit Fund” that SB32 proposes to create. Missouri funeral homes are already quite familiar with the state contract fee that was authorized in 2009 by Senate Bill No. 1. Per that law, the State Board began charging a fee on each preneed contract sold. That contract…
Missouri SB32: A New Audit Direction
By Bill Stalter
With our next few posts we will dive deeper into SB32, the Missouri preneed legislation intended to provide the State Board a new audit direction and some new enforcement tools. Our first issue will be the change in course on preneed audits.
The bill would amend section 436.470 by adding the following new section:
3. …
Missouri Funeral Trust: Is there anything to be learned from Wisconsin?
By Bill Stalter
When the MFT’s previous preneed exam was making news during the summer of 2015, reorganization plans were being filed for the Wisconsin Master Trust and the California Master Trust. As we reported in “Association Master Trusts: De Facto Trustees”, each reorganization plan sought to eliminate the association’s de facto trustee relationship that had…
Missouri Funeral Trust: Just how much is this costing consumers and funeral homes?
By Bill Stalter
When the MFDEA Preneed Portability video disclosed that expense distributions were being paid from the Missouri Funeral Trust to the association, we thought it was appropriate to revisit prior blog posts about the failures of association master trusts in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and California. Those state association master trusts were forced to close, to restructure…