Lawmaker wants rules for home funerals

PORTLAND, Ore. - Home funerals, and people offering to help you conduct one, are rising in popularity and a state lawmaker is trying to set some ground rules.

The state's Mortuary and Cemetery Board is getting more and more calls from people who can't afford a traditional funeral and are looking for cheaper ways to deal with death.

"It's much cheaper, it's very, very personal and the family is in control of the situation," said Janie Malloy with Farewell Assistance Services.

In most cases, families opt for cremation, which still has to be outsourced.  But some opt for a burial at home.

"I did not know you could bury grandma in the backyard, which really alarmed me" said Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene.

Walker is sponsoring a bill that would require home burials be on private property and would also require you to notify the state, and whoever buys your home, that someone is buried there.

"If you were to buy a piece of property now and someone didn't disclose that grandma was buried there and you find out and it's pretty freaky to you, you have no recourse," said Walker.

Additionally, the bill would require that all death care consultants pass an exam and be licensed to operate, an idea the Mortuary and Cemetery Board supports.

"More and more people are wanting to do it themselves," said Michelle Gaines with the Mortuary and Cemetery Board.  The idea is to provide the same level of consumer protection."

But it's a step that Malloy and others who preside over home funerals say is being taken without their voices being heard in the conversation.

"We're legislating death is what it seems to us," said Nancy Ward with Sacred Endings.

Ward and Malloy, along with death doolahs or death midwives, are not licensed in Oregon.  Traditional funeral practitioners are and so are embalmers.  Walker's bill would create a third category for people who charge for death consulting services, which would be overseen by the Mortuary and Cemetery Board.