The deal documents would dissolve Selected’s Educational Trust, which funds more than 200 named memorial scholarships, and send its assets to NFDA’s charitable arm. The required Illinois approval is publicly unverified, and a judge hears the merger dispute October 23.
A September 9 federal order denies the Texas Funeral Services Commission's second dismissal bid in East Plano Islamic Center's religious-bias suit, which now proceeds to discovery. The ruling follows a June order that rejected qualified immunity for former presiding officer Kristin Tips.
The deal documents would dissolve Selected's Educational Trust, which funds more than 200 named memorial scholarships, and send its assets to NFDA's charitable arm. The required Illinois approval is publicly unverified, and a judge hears the merger dispute October 23.
NFDA's side of the merger vote is decided: the board-seats amendment passed 69.8 percent to 30.2 percent, 27 votes above the two-thirds bar. NFDA also acknowledged, for the first time, the Ohio restraining order freezing Selected's ballot. The deal now runs through a courtroom in Akron.
Matthews International will shrink its board from ten to eight directors immediately after its 2027 annual meeting. The move follows five new director appointments since 2023, a string of divestitures, and a reduced FY2026 adjusted EBITDA outlook of $158-162 million.
A Summit County judge has frozen Selected's merger vote two days before it was to close. Obitley obtained the order itself: no vote closes, no ballots get counted, until members receive full disclosures and 30 days to read them. A hearing is set for Oct. 23 in Akron.
A second family is suing R.G. Ortiz Funeral Home for $18 million over the May body mix-up, and the complaint names owner Michelle Ortiz personally. Jose Luis Diaz asked for direct cremation with no viewing. His daughters cannot be sure the ashes they received are his.
Two Detroit families sued Hutchison Funeral Home and a cremation company over an alleged body swap, announced September 30 in Southfield. One mother was cremated before her scheduled viewing, the suits say, and another woman's body was presented in her place. No claim has been tested in court.
A Cook County judge barred any lease, use or occupancy of the South Chicago Chapel building until an Oct. 30 hearing, with a court-ordered inspection set for Oct. 23. Chicago police also searched the operators' Planet Green storefront in Glenwood, carrying out dozens of boxes. State police sent prosecutors 1,166 potential counts in 2025; none have been filed.
Carriage Services terminated its $100 million at-the-market equity program effective October 4, 2026. Its August 10-Q shows no shares were ever sold. The company paired the termination with a $300 million JPMorgan-led credit facility, a lower leverage target, and a plan built around refinancing $400 million of notes due May 2029.
Rose City Funerals LLC's civil suit has produced a $712,050.50 tendered partial agreed judgment against Joshua and Charity Silvers. The copy on file is unsigned, and the Henry County Clerk's Office says it is still awaiting the judge's signature. Count XI and both prejudgment attachments survive against all four defendants.
Three people went unclaimed in May 2025. A funeral home with no license cremated them, and the death certificates written afterward were false. Nebraska's answer: two years of probation and a required supervisor.
Maryland's 2024 law left a gap: it legalized natural organic reduction but never said where the soil could be spread. Worcester County's answer came from its zoning board, 4-2. Now the county's own commissioners are in court trying to reverse it.
The NC Cemetery Commission has received 30 complaints against Montlawn Memorial Park since 2020, its executive director confirmed to Obitley. Fifteen of them arrived in 2022 alone, the year the cemetery's corporate parent was taken private, and none of the 30 has resulted in formal action. What the 2022 complaints concerned is not public.
The process holds vessel heat above 131 degrees and Washington tests the finished soil for salmonella. A Washington State University study met the federal pathogen standard in every trial. The food-crop bans were precaution and politics, not laboratory findings, and no documented illness has ever been traced to human composting soil.
One body becomes roughly a cubic yard of soil. A single facility at capacity could need 70 to 130 acres of ground a year. Worcester County, Maryland and Fresno County, California hit that question in different ways this year, and 15 more states are still writing their rules.
The sentence is in: 15 years of probation and the full $266,636.28, at a minimum of $1,500 a month starting Nov. 1. Butler passed over a nine-year prison path, citing restitution. Nothing in the sentence, or in Nebraska law, restricts the monument trade.
A 20-count indictment unsealed April 1, 2026 charges Camelot Funeral Home director Michael Naughton of Baldwin with grand larceny, forgery and unlicensed practice after a January inspection found 13 decomposing bodies and 17 boxes of cremated remains at the Mount Vernon business. His license had been revoked seven years earlier. Obitley has requested the state disciplinary records that have never been made public.
Missouri's State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors revoked funeral director license No. 007271 of James C. McSpadden, owner of Richards Funeral Home in New Madrid, on Sept. 24, 2026. Court records show he is charged with one count of felony stealing, and the sheriff says the investigation remains open, per KFVS12. It is the second Missouri preneed-related revocation announced in two days.
Seven weeks of silence ended in one day: NFDA CEO Christine Pepper answered three written questions from Obitley, and opposition lead Nathanael Billow named Brennan, Manna & Diamond as the firm filing the members' DC Attorney General complaint this week. He also cleared his alternative plan for publication, and NFDA confirmed its bylaws ballot is running on schedule under an outside election administrator.
Obitley read the full letter of intent, public since Sept. 25. It binds the two associations to secrecy and a 180-day bar on alternatives. Every promise made to members sits in sections the letter stamps non-binding, and the last signature arrived five days after the letter took effect.
Missouri's funeral board has filed three disciplinary complaints against Serenity Memorial of St. Louis since 2023, alleging falsified embalming dates, unidentified bodies and unlicensed embalming. No discipline has taken effect, and owner Gerald Johnson is suing the regulators in federal court.
One day after ballots opened, ConnectingDirectors reports members' lawyers are filing a DC Attorney General complaint seeking an injunction on the merger vote. The board has met one demand since Sept. 14, the LOI release, and ignored the rest, including what happens to member personal and business data. The vote closes Oct. 8.
Missouri's State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors revoked 11 licenses held by James & Gahr Mortuary, Dent County Memorial Chapel and owners Donn and Connie James on Sept. 24, 2026, citing violations of preneed contract and fund laws and a broken probationary agreement. Preneed contracts and funds must transfer to a new Missouri-licensed seller within 30 days.
A Fentress County grand jury indicted Chadrick "Chad" Mundy on 52 counts September 23, from fraudulent insurance claims to abuse of a corpse. He was booked into the Fentress County Jail on an $80,000 bond. The charges convert August's emergency license suspensions into a criminal case.
Obitley read the full letter of intent, public since Sept. 25. It binds the two associations to secrecy and a 180-day bar on alternatives. Every promise made to members sits in sections the letter stamps non-binding, and the last signature arrived five days after the letter took effect.
The opposition leader says members will see the alternative plan before ballots open Thursday, the board has not answered the business plan he submitted Sept. 13, and a Sept. 14 demand letter gives Selected until Oct. 2 to release its own financial records.
Jury selection is set for Oct. 15 and trial for Oct. 19, per the Pennsylvania AG's official victim page. The Senate bill written in response, SB 950, has sat in committee since July 2025.
Joshua Silvers pleaded guilty to felony theft and received six years of home detention plus $170,984.27 in restitution for thefts from Rose City Funeral Home in New Castle, Indiana. The money included funds meant for prepaid funerals; the owners say the business lost at least $500,000 in value.
Philip Pietras accepted a plea deal Friday at Rockville Superior Court: 15 years in prison, suspended after 7.5 years, plus five years of probation. The formal guilty plea is scheduled for October 23 and sentencing for January 22, 2027. Connecticut's restitution payments to victims begin July 1, 2027.
NFDA's bylaws ballot asks members two separate questions: one on the merger with Selected, one on technical changes, either of which can pass without the other. Voting opened September 24. Article XIII requires a two-thirds vote for the merger changes while Selected's members dissolve at a simple majority, and NFDA weighs member votes more heavily than the association being absorbed. Article XIII requires a two-thirds vote to pass it while Selected's members dissolve at a simple majority, and NFDA weighs member votes more heavily than the association being absorbed.
Selected's own framing, relayed by On Deathcare's Tony Russo, says members voting no should bring "a well-researched plan." One is coming, Billow says, in two to three weeks. The ballot opens Sept. 24 and closes Oct. 8.
Selected's CEO told Obitley the merger vote is a dissolution vote under D.C. nonprofit law that requires only a simple majority, and the two-thirds supermajority described in trade coverage since August does not apply. The electronic ballot launches September 24 and stays open 15 days.
Texas's new operating rules for willed body programs and anatomical donation took effect yesterday, Sept. 6. The Texas Funeral Service Commission adopted the package Aug. 14 and published it in the Texas Register Aug. 28. Chain-of-custody enforcement begins Oct. 6.
The conversion took effect August 31 with a three-month fuse: every Funeral Establishment registration in Colorado, converted ones included, expires November 30, 2026. Emergency rules cover only the first half of the bill, and the second half has no date.
Wake Forest parents say a ground rod confirmed someone else occupies the plot they bought beside their son. The suit is live and pre-answer, with a court-selected settlement conference pending and no class certified.
Selected's members-only town hall ran 1:00 to 2:20 p.m. in Louisville with no votes taken and no press access. Ballots are expected in roughly two weeks on a letter of intent members are told is confidential. Three Obitley requests to the merger's principals were pending as of Thursday afternoon, none answered.
Chicago is asking a Cook County judge to fine the operators of South Chicago Chapel $11,500 for every day that 23 building code violations go uncorrected. The complaint describes 51 bodies in a rear storage room and calls the chapel an unlicensed funeral home.
The initial hearing set for Sept. 1 was canceled the day before, the reason listed only as "Other." Judge Johnson set a Nov. 19 hearing and a Jan. 25, 2027 jury trial. The 37 counts span July 2014 to April 2025, and that span decides whether Indiana caps available prison time at seven years or fourteen.
The campaign over the NFDA-Selected deal has gone public: an opposition post outdrawing the leadership interview better than 2-to-1, board calls to every member firm, and a letter of intent members cannot read.
City records show Ald. Peter Chico’s office complained about South Chicago Chapel twice in September 2025, nearly a year before 56 decomposing bodies were found. One complaint ended with a 20-minute inspection. The other was closed in seven minutes, with no referral to the agency that licenses funeral directors.
A $16,396,000 lawsuit says Jose Daniel Diaz Felipe was cremated five days before his scheduled wake, while a stranger's body, dressed in his clothes, lay in his coffin. The operator settled with NYC regulators in 2024 for more than $700,000 over 82 charged violations.
Two 2026 criminal cases, one sentenced and one pending, took prepaid funeral money from guardianship programs. In Michigan, Terry Kaufman owes $1.1 million to 204 victims. In Tennessee, Mundy Funeral Home is accused of filing death claims on the living. Nobody was watching the money.
Investigators say the Jamestown funeral home filed life insurance claims on living people, including director Chad Mundy’s own wife. The fraudulent claims topped $80,000. No civil or criminal case had been filed as of Aug. 26.
The state suspended Johanna Morgan’s license on Aug. 5. The next day, authorities found 56 decomposing bodies at South Chicago Chapel. Obitley’s three records requests since July 17 have produced zero records.
Two past presidents’ families lead the first organized opposition to the NFDA-Selected deal. Members cannot read the letter of intent they are being asked to approve, and the two men say 85% of 70 firms they polled lean no.
Owner Jeff Edmondson told the board his business would have no ties to Gary Greiner, then acknowledged a lease paying Greiner $3,500 a month plus half the net profits. The board voted 4-0 to deny.
Vigo County Prosecutor Terry Modesitt announced 37 charges at a 2 p.m. news conference Thursday. Jail records cited by the Tribune-Star show Gary Greiner booked just before 12:45 p.m. and released about 2:40 p.m. after posting a $50,000 cash bond.
A sheriff evicted New Orleans Funeral and Cremation Service in July 2026. Inside, the coroner found 16 bodies and 12 sets of cremated remains. The state had already revoked owner Gary Lewis's license. An automatic stay from his appeal let the business keep operating anyway.
The brand on the door says Dignity Memorial. The name on the court filings says Service Corporation International. Over more than two decades, the distance between those two names has produced roughly $217 million in settlements, civil penalties, and jury verdicts across at least five states.
No government program provides free cremation. But the VA benefit package, used correctly, can bring a family's total cost under $500. The gap between "free" and "close to free" is where families lose money, miss deadlines, and fall for marketing that overpromises.
Four manufacturers control the U.S. and European cremation equipment market, according to SEC filings from the largest supplier. With the cremation rate at 62.8 percent and environmental regulations forcing equipment replacement, the cost of cremation furnaces is widening the divide between chain-owned and independent funeral homes.
The VA does not send burial money automatically. A family has to know the benefit exists, find the correct form, and submit it within two years. Most families are never told any of this is available.
Every cremation in America runs through a machine called a retort. Most come from the same Pittsburgh company. Matthews International's SEC filings describe a cremation equipment market where four companies control the U.S. and European supply.
The VA provides burial benefits for cremation, just as it does for casket burial. But the cash allowances cover a fraction of the actual cost, and the program is structured so that money goes unclaimed at every step.
Robert Bush pleaded guilty to 67 criminal charges including preventing lawful burials, fraud, and theft from charities. He operated for 12 years before anyone stopped him. The same regulatory gap exists in the United States, and the people who can close it are the good funeral directors who already know something is wrong.
The U.S. deathcare market hit $20.7 billion in 2024. Underneath that headline, five trends are pulling the industry in different directions: rising cremation and falling per-case revenue, accelerating consolidation, consumer demand outpacing legal availability, the FTC transparency rule, and a generational succession gap.
A Colorado company announced partnerships bringing human composting to the Southeast and Northeast. The real story is the licensing model underneath: proprietary vessels, proprietary additive, and a network of dependent funeral homes.
The U.S. funeral and cremation services market was valued at $25 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $35 billion by 2034. But the cremation rate rising to 82.3% by 2045 means every incremental case generates $2,020 less revenue than the burial it replaces. Market research reports show aggregate growth. The per-case math tells a different story.
Illinois found 100 bodies in trailers at a crematory, then passed a law with civil penalties up to $10,000 per violation and a first-of-its-kind 72-hour emergency body possession protocol. But the law does not require routine inspections. Colorado, Maryland, and Illinois each discovered their worst crematory failures by accident.
Service Corporation International performed 5,872 fewer funerals in Q1 2026 than the same quarter a year earlier. Average revenue per service rose 3.4% to $5,947. The company sold $306 million in new funeral preneed contracts and $482 million in cemetery preneed. Fewer families walked through the door. The ones who did paid more.
An FTC study found only 40 percent of funeral homes list prices online. The Funeral Rule requires price disclosure, but regulators have not updated it for the internet era. A proposed rulemaking could change that. The industry is fighting it.
A Pennsylvania headstone salesman defrauded hundreds of families. The FTC Funeral Rule does not cover standalone monument dealers. Federal prosecutors are now building cases, but the regulatory gap remains.
Yolo County prosecutors allege two funeral homes charged for services and merchandise they did not provide. A casket was suspended over an open grave. The case exposes gaps in California's enforcement framework.
SCI's board authorized $600 million in share buybacks while carrying $5.16 billion in debt and a 3.26x debt-to-equity ratio. Net income fell 4.9% in Q1 2026. Interest costs consumed 26 cents of every dollar of operating income.
Oklahoma Funeral Board member John Davenport sold his eight-funeral-home company to Toronto-based Park Lawn Corporation in December 2025. In April 2026, he seconded the board motion approving license transfers for those properties. He did not recuse.
Park Lawn Corporation says it is "not a consolidator." Since December, the Toronto company acquired 13 funeral homes across Oklahoma. The homes keep their local names. No state agency tracks who owns them.
Washington legalized human composting in 2019. It took seven more years to let families bury a relative on their own land. The bill stalled in committee for three years with no recorded opposition. The statute that blocked it funneled every family into a commercial purchase.
CANA research finds 25% of Americans store cremated remains at home. The trade group calls it a crisis and is selling permanent placement as the fix. The actual driver is cost. Families are not neglecting their dead. They cannot afford the second purchase.
Foundation Partners Group partnered with fintech Lilypay to sell grieving families installment plans. The lender markets "0% interest ever." The fee is up to 8 percent. No federal agency tracks funeral BNPL defaults.
A Pennsylvania headstone salesman defrauded nearly 500 grieving families over five years. The FTC Funeral Rule does not cover standalone monument dealers. No state requires escrow for upfront payments.
Six companies sell AI replicas of the dead. Meta patented a system for autonomous posthumous agents. No state requires consent from the deceased. No federal law governs who owns a digital persona after death. The industry is scaling inside that vacuum.
Carriage Services filed paperwork to sell up to $100 million of its own stock to fund more funeral home acquisitions and pay down debt. The company carries $522.3 million in long-term debt against $2.9 million in cash, and interest expense ate 27% of its first-quarter operating income.
For nearly a decade the VA paid families $300 toward a funeral while the median funeral passed $8,000. A veterans bill moving through Congress addresses paperwork and cemetery access, not the dollar amount.
A new documentary from Eli Roth and Leonardo DiCaprio's production company is bringing water cremation to a mainstream audience. The coverage that followed got the basic facts wrong. We checked the record.
We tracked every deal, every price increase, every community left with fewer choices. The consolidation of American deathcare is accelerating — and it's happening without scrutiny.
Americans spend decades planning for retirement. Most spend less than 48 hours planning a funeral. We analyzed hundreds of funeral bills across six states and found a pattern of opaque pricing, inflated markups, and fees that regulators have known about for decades.
A Georgia-born company with Florida headquarters, pre-approved acquisition financing, and a Free Valuation intake page is methodically buying family-owned funeral homes from retiring owners.
Oklahoma was poised to become the latest state to legalize natural organic reduction. Then the governor's veto pen turned a quiet regulatory debate into a national flashpoint.
A 460-location deathcare conglomerate, rebranded from a troubled public company and backed by global capital, is quietly acquiring family-owned cemeteries across the country.
When the fourth-generation family funeral home changed hands, residents noticed: higher prices, shorter services, and a corporate script replacing personal care.
Obitley is an independent investigative journalism publication covering the business, politics, and people of the American deathcare industry. We track corporate consolidation, cremation trends, regulatory changes, and the stories of operators and families.
Yes. All Obitley investigations are free to read. We also publish a free weekly newsletter, the Deathcare Briefing, every Tuesday.
Obitley was founded by Heidi Macomber, an independent journalist covering the business and politics of the American deathcare industry.
Consolidation, cremation trends, women in deathcare, regulation, private equity and finance, and independent funeral home survival.
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