Every figure, and where it comes from.

Projected 2025 U.S. cremation rate, vs 31.6% projected burial.

NFDA's figure for 2025 is itself a projection, from its 2025 report; no 2026 NFDA report was found on nfda.org on 2026-10-22. The 82.3% often seen is the projection for 2045. The site labels both as projections.

Projected U.S. cremation rate.

A forecast, always presented as such — never as today's number.

SEC Exhibit 21 is read for the parent chain of U.S. public companies.

SEDAR+ is read for the parent chain of Canadian public companies.

FTC orders are read for named divestitures in the parent chain.

Funeral homes in the United States.

Establishment counts vary by series and definition, so the site uses NFDA's throughout rather than mixing them. An earlier version of this note compared NFDA against a Census establishment range; that comparison was withdrawn as unverified and returns only with a named series and vintage.

Share of U.S. funeral homes that are family- or privately-owned.

Older copy citing 89–90% reflects a stale NFDA figure.

Service Corporation International — locations and FY2025 revenue; the largest North American deathcare provider.

SCI's own 10-K estimates its North American funeral and cemetery market share at about 18% of estimated total industry revenue; the site uses that figure. An earlier ~16% was third-party research. (This entry used to say the 10-K states no share and calls the industry “highly fragmented”; it does state one, and those words do not appear in it.)

Batesville (~44%) and Matthews together supply the majority of U.S. caskets.

Hillenbrand divested Batesville to LongRange Capital (2023) — Batesville is now standalone. Matthews sold its SGK brand-solutions arm (2025), NOT its casket/memorialization segment, which it is growing. Combined share is an industry estimate (Batesville is private).

Of 1,046 funeral homes with websites surveyed across 35 state capitals, 18% posted their price lists online.

The most recent national survey of this kind; the site carries the as-of date rather than implying it is current-year. A widely circulated "36%" figure traces to secondary commentary, not to a survey.

75% of Americans favor, and 3% oppose, requiring funeral homes that have a website to post their prices on it.

The FTC Funeral Rule still requires only in-person and telephone price disclosure.

The review opened Feb 14, 2020 with a request for comment (85 FR 8490); the advance notice followed Nov 2, 2022 (87 FR 66096) and a public workshop Sep 7, 2023 (Unified Agenda, RIN 3084-AB55). It remains open with no proposed or final amendment. The site says “under review,” never “now required.”

Maximum civil penalty for a Funeral Rule violation, under the FTC Act sections the Rule is enforced through.

Adjusted annually for inflation — up from $51,744 — so re-check it each January rather than treating it as durable. There was no adjustment for calendar 2026, which is why the 2025 figure is still the current one. It is a per-violation maximum, not a typical outcome.

VA pays the full burial allowance for veterans discharged from VA medical or nursing care into VA-provided hospice at home who die between Jul 1, 2025 and Oct 1, 2026.

A temporary expansion under the Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act, closing a gap where a death at home after that discharge often did not qualify. Families must apply. The site states the window, never a specific allowance amount — the rate schedule was not verified against VA's own tables. VA's burial-allowance page no longer mentions the hospice window (checked 2026-10-22), so the release is the citation. Extension bills (S. 3898, H.R. 7199) were still in committee on 2026-10-22, not law.

Colorado HB26-1258 raises abuse of a corpse from a class 6 to a class 5 felony for offenses committed on or after Jan 1, 2027, alongside changes to the Mortuary Science Code and its licensure options.

Illinois HB 4695 (Public Act 104-501) lets the Comptroller inspect crematory records and premises, requires each crematory authority to maintain a standard operating procedure and a medical-waste management plan, and requires notice where remains are not cremated 30 days after delivery.

Public Act 104-0501 raises the civil penalty cap from $5,000 to $10,000 per violation and binds crematory authorities. The controlling text is the Crematory Regulation Act, 410 ILCS 18, as amended. Until 2026-10-22 this entry said the act took effect Jul 1, 2026 and reduced the penalty from $25,000; the Illinois General Assembly's record shows both were wrong.

New Jersey's monument dealers lost to the Archdiocese of Newark in court (2013 suit, affirmed on appeal 2015), took the issue to the legislature instead, won a statute barring religious-cemetery monument sales (signed March 2015), and the law then survived a federal constitutional challenge brought with the Institute for Justice — upheld in district court, with no appeal taken.

Cited here for one fact only: a small, out-resourced segment organized, legislated, and defended the result — against one of the best-resourced public-interest litigation firms in the country. The site takes no position on the statute's merits; the challengers' own press release is the linked record of the outcome.

LARA Corporations records carry the entity, agent, officers on annual reports, assumed names, and mergers; never members or shareholders.

The CSCL licence records carry the funeral establishment licence with its manager of record, cemetery and crematory registration, and preneed registration.

The CSCL licence list carries a self-reported 'owner' field, which is the one bridge from the licence to the corporate entity in Michigan public data.

The county Register of Deeds carries deeds, mortgages, and memoranda of lease (the sale-leaseback tell).

The assessor's roll with the Property Transfer Affidavit catches ground transfers that never touch a deed.

HB 4077 requires the medical certification of a death to be submitted through the state's web-based death-registration system, beginning one year after the act took effect.

The act names no calendar date and no system: Sec. 2843(2) starts the requirement one year after the effective date, and the act took immediate effect on Mar 17, 2026. The MPHI-run michiganedrs.org says “on or before March 16, 2027”, the last day before it applies; no michigan.gov page states the date, and an MDHHS memo describes VERA as the system used for death record keeping. The act covers the medical certification; it does not say paper ends.

SB 157 (Pet Cemetery Regulation) cleared the Senate; it stalled in House committee.

Deliberately never described as enacted — it is not law.

Human composting (natural organic reduction) is legal in 14 states; alkaline hydrolysis in 26. Michigan has authorized neither method.

State counts move often; the site carries an as-of date rather than treating the number as durable. The alkaline-hydrolysis count is CANA's (cremationassociation.org/alkalinehydrolysis.html), and its list does not include Michigan. No Michigan statute or bill authorizing human composting was found on 2026-10-22. Raised from ~12 to 14 in Aug 2026 on an internal research report; re-sourced on 2026-10-22 to BioCycle, which counts 14 as of late 2025.

Michigan cemeteries must deposit at least 15% of the prior month's proceeds from sales of burial, entombment and columbarium rights into an irrevocable endowment and perpetual-care trust, report annually to the Cemetery Commissioner, and give the Commissioner access to the books for audit.

The base is proceeds from RIGHTS sales, not total revenue. Perpetual care is also a separate fund from Michigan preneed merchandise-and-services funding — selling more preneed does not repair a perpetual-care deficit, and a deficit found on audit carries a penalty.

Park Lawn Corporation divested 72 cemeteries and 11 funeral homes across Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina and South Carolina to Everstory Partners; the Michigan properties in the package were cemeteries.

Everstory Partners is the former StoneMor, headquartered in Bensalem, PA (trade reporting, not re-opened on 2026-10-22). ≈$70M is the announced aggregate for the four-state package — per-state values were not disclosed, so the site never states a Michigan-only figure.

D.S. Temrowski & Sons (Warren) and A.H. Peters (Grosse Pointe Woods and Warren) operate under Service Corporation International's Dignity Memorial network while keeping their founding names.

Verified against SCI's own provider directory rather than third-party lists. Stated as network membership under SCI ownership — the site does not assert acquisition dates or terms, which the directory does not carry.

Georgia-based Rollings Funeral Service entered Michigan by acquiring RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes — founded 1910, three Detroit-area locations plus the Cremation Society of Michigan — naming Michigan and Ohio as its expansion targets.

UNVERIFIED as of 2026-10-22: the cited page refuses automated requests (HTTP 403), it has no archived copy, and no independent report of the deal was found. The dated record holds it back until someone confirms it by hand. The Harris homes are said to continue under their founding name with the prior family managers retained.

SB 1060 of 2026 would repeal MCL 339.1812 — the Occupational Code section barring a cemetery from owning, managing or operating a funeral establishment, directly or indirectly — as part of a mortuary-science licensing package.

A bill, not law — the anti-combination wall (1980 PA 299, in force since 1980) stands unless it passes. The section the bill adds, 339.1806c, is a funeral-directing licensure section per the introduced text — the repealed wall is eliminated, not relocated. Sponsors: Hertel (D), Santana (D), Webber (R). The site describes it only as pending, never as enacted. The site takes no position on the bill.

A Michigan cemetery may not adopt or enforce a rule prohibiting installation of a grave memorial or burial vault unless it was purchased from the cemetery — a disciplinable violation, with an administrative fine of up to $5,000 per violation. Consistent quality, size, shape, type, installation and maintenance rules remain permitted.

The enforcement route is a complaint to the Cemetery Commissioner (LARA), not a lawsuit — which is why this matters most to the small dealers least able to litigate. The federal analogue (the Rosebrough antitrust line) depends on private suits.

HB 4879–4934 (2025) is an occupational-licensing reform package that would repeal some licenses outright, cut education and training mandates, and broaden licensing reciprocity across many occupations.

HB 4879 through HB 4934 is 56 bill numbers, all introduced Sep 11, 2025; none is a Public Act, and HB 4913 drew an adverse roll call on Oct 30, 2025. The legislature does not define the package's membership, so the count is the range. Stated at the package level only. Whether and how the package reaches mortuary science specifically is under review bill-by-bill and is not asserted until that pass is done. Notable because it moves opposite to the SB 1060–1071 mortuary-science package in the same legislature.

Return to Nature Funeral Home's operators mishandled at least 190 bodies over four years while collecting more than $130,000 for services never performed, and certified dispositions that had not happened.

Jon Hallford 240 months, Carie Hallford 216 months, joint restitution $1,070,413.74, both after guilty pleas to wire-fraud conspiracy; separate state sentences followed. Cited here as a concluded matter — the site names enforcement cases only after conviction.

Former Huron County funeral director sentenced for a preneed embezzlement scheme.

Terry Kaufman, Bad Axe — 85–240 months; restitution $1,111,165.77 to 204 victims. Verified via the AG's release. On 2026-10-23 the michigan.gov page refused automated requests, so it was re-read through the AG's own GovDelivery bulletin of the same release.