A Simple Majority and a Ballot That Opens Before the Plan; Chicago Seeks $11,500 a Day; 14 Suits Pile Up on TruStage; Two States Write New Rules

Trade coverage since August 20, Obitley's included, described the threshold as a two-thirds supermajority of the membership. In a September 9 telephone interview, Rob Paterkiewicz, Selected's CEO and executive director since 2007, said the number does not apply to this vote. "It is not a two-thirds, it actually is a simple majority vote," he told Obitley.

The distinction is what kind of vote this is. Selected's constitution requires a two-thirds majority for changes to itself, and that is the figure the association has referenced for years. But the merger ballot asks members to approve the dissolution of the association, because Selected cannot remain a separate 501(c)(6) if the two organizations combine. Under D.C. nonprofit law, where Selected is incorporated, that vote requires a simple majority. D.C. Code sec. 29-412.02 governs approval of dissolution for nonprofit corporations.

Paterkiewicz said counsel raised the question "a couple of weeks ago, just prior to showing up to the annual meeting," and that the change was shared with members during the closed Annual Meeting in Louisville. The electronic ballot launches September 24 and stays open 15 days. Selected was founded in 1917 by 25 funeral firms. For opponents whose poll of 70 firms found 85 percent leaning no, the lower threshold cuts the other way: fewer yes votes are needed to end the association's independence.

The City of Chicago has taken the operators of South Chicago Chapel to court, asking a Cook County judge to fine Clark and Johanna Morgan $11,500 for every day that 23 building code violations go uncorrected. The complaint, Case No. 20261401023 in the Circuit Court of Cook County, was filed in late August and reported by WTTW on September 1. It calls the business an unlicensed funeral home, and it is the city's first court action against the operators since authorities found 56 decomposing bodies in the building on August 6.

The filing describes the storage room. It says 51 bodies were stacked there in varying degrees of severe decomposition, half inside an "insufficiently operating cooler." The rest were "strewn haphazardly" through the storage area, and "the stench was overwhelming and could be smelled outside the building." The city inspected the property on August 6 and alleges the violations existed that day "and on each succeeding day thereafter." Midwest Group of Illinois, LLC, owns the building, and the Morgans and South Chicago Chapel Inc. are named as lessees. The city leaves a receiver and demolition open as remedies.

What has not happened is equally central. No criminal charges have been filed against the Morgans to date, more than a month after the discovery. The complaint's records review notes that Evergreen Park police found two bodies in Clark Morgan's minivan in June 2024, two years before the chapel discovery. A proposed class action over the chapel has a first hearing set for October 13, and the city's suit runs on a parallel track, converting each uncorrected day into money. The Cook County medical examiner had identified 47 of the 56 remains as of August 21.

Joe Earthman holds two TruStage preneed contracts at Joseph Earthman Generations, his Houston funeral home, and in late August he could verify neither. "We've got no idea when we're going to get paid," he told the trade publication Connecting Directors on August 25. "We haven't even been able to verify that these policies even exist."

TruStage, the insurer formerly known as CUNA Mutual Group, identified the attack on July 11, shut down its own network to contain it, and disclosed the incident publicly on July 15. It told partners it anticipated the majority of key processes would be operational by mid-August. Funeral homes are still counting the cost: Missouri families fronted funeral costs they had already paid for in advance, and 14 proposed class actions are now pending in federal court, including one brought by a credit union, Bessemer System FCU.

TruStage says it protects 42 million consumer relationships, and 93 percent of credit unions partner with the insurer, because of its historic roots in the credit union movement. The insurer's first court answer is due September 24.

Two Wake Forest parents lost their son in March 2021 and buried his remains at Pine Forest Memorial Gardens, then bought two additional plots beside him so they could be buried at his feet. Four years later, on a gravesite visit, they found what appeared to be "another body" in the plot they owned, according to the lawsuit. A cemetery employee then "placed a rod in the ground and confirmed again that someone was buried there," the complaint states, in wording reported by WRAL.

The case, Foster v. Pine Forest Memorial Gardens LLC, No. 5:26-cv-00620, now sits before Judge Louise W. Flanagan in the Eastern District of North Carolina as a proposed federal class action, and the docket moved from removal to mediation in three days. WRAL identifies the cemetery's corporate ownership as Everstory Partners, a Florida-based operator with more than 400 cemeteries across 23 states and Puerto Rico, including 58 operations in North Carolina, second only to Pennsylvania.

The state record shows the same pattern in slow motion. North Carolina Cemetery Commission files show 30 complaints against Montlawn, an Everstory cemetery, since 2020, and no formal action taken. In 2014, Kizzie Sewell paid $3,150 for a Montlawn gravesite that turned out to be double-sold; her husband was exhumed in 2019 under a court order. WRAL counts the Pine Forest suit as at least the second such mix-up at Montlawn and the third involving an Everstory property.

Colorado's Office of Funeral and Mortuary Science Services adopted the first phase of rules implementing HB26-1258 on an emergency basis on August 31, at a hearing that began at 3:30 p.m. Mountain time. The same day, every funeral home and crematory registration in the state converted to a single "Funeral Establishment" registration, prefix FES. "Funeral Home and Crematory Applications are no longer available," the state's licensing portal states.

The conversion came with a deadline attached. Every FES registration in Colorado, converted ones included, expires November 30, 2026, putting every funeral establishment in the state up for renewal at once, ahead of the 2027 individual-licensure requirement. Funeral Establishment applications opened September 1.

The emergency rules cover only the first half of the bill signed in June; the second half has no date. Under the law itself, abuse of a corpse rises to a class 5 felony on January 1, 2027 for offenses committed on or after that date, and the registration program and individual licenses face sunset review together in September 2031.

Texas's new operating rules for willed body programs and anatomical donation took effect September 6. The Texas Funeral Service Commission adopted the package August 14 and published it in the Texas Register on August 28, amending 22 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 206 to give the commission operating rules for the programs Senate Bill 2040 moved to the agency in 2023.

The rules apply when a death certificate's disposition reads "Donation" or when a non-transplant anatomical donation organization is the donee. They bring chain-of-custody forms, registration for donation organizations on 12-month terms, and an admission ban on public display, with chain-of-custody form enforcement beginning October 6 and custody forms retained for seven years.

The same Register issue repeals the rules of the Anatomical Board of the State of Texas, the defunct board whose separate regulatory role ended in 2023, with the commission as successor agency. Obitley previously traced who profits in the body-donation industry and how unevenly states regulate it.

Oklahoma County District Judge Don Andrews denied the state's motion to dismiss on July 30, keeping alive Caskets of Honor's constitutional challenge to the Funeral Services Licensing Act, the law that reserves casket sales for licensed funeral directors. Oklahoma is one of three states with such a ban, per the Institute for Justice. The case now moves to a full hearing on the merits. No hearing date has been reported in any public source.

Candice Mentink and Todd Collard run Caskets of Honor from Calvin, in Hughes County, selling caskets wrapped in vinyl graphic designs. In 2021 the couple displayed caskets at the Tulsa State Fair, where a Funeral Board investigator posed undercover as an interested customer. The Board fined them $4,000, per the petition, and sought more than $8,000 before the couple settled for $4,700 in fines and costs. They now sell only to funeral homes, and the Board required a workshop sign stating they cannot sell directly to their fellow Oklahomans. Reorganized as a Texas company, the business ships to almost every state except Oklahoma.

The license path, per the suit: two years of mortuary science classes, a one-year apprenticeship, and two exams. The 10th U.S. Circuit upheld the law under the U.S. Constitution in Powers v. Harris (2004); the new suit runs under the Oklahoma Constitution. The state called the law consumer protection; the petition cites the Board's own consumer FAQ: "there is no direct relationship between the protective features of the casket and the preservation of the body." Repeal bills died in three straight sessions, with the Funeral Board and the state funeral directors association the only reported opponents. An expert report filed in the suit by economist David Harrington puts the average Oklahoma funeral at $5,671, 18 percent above neighboring states, a figure not independently verified.

Kelli Lepler pleaded no contest on August 4 in Hall County District Court to three Class IIIA felony counts of attempted theft by deception, and Judge Andrew Butler found her guilty. In exchange, 43 theft charges were dismissed. Sentencing is set for 1:30 p.m. on September 30. The plea followed a year-and-a-half competency fight: Butler found her not competent to stand trial in January 2025, ordered her medicated in July 2025, and ruled her competent in June 2026. She had spent 1,118 days in custody, from her July 2023 arrest in Wentzville, Missouri, to the plea.

The money owed to victims is one open question. The State will request full restitution of $266,636.28, with the exact amount set at sentencing. Terri Webben, a retired Grand Island teacher, paid Lepler $7,510 in August 2021 for a headstone for her husband; two years of excuses followed before a police complaint in April 2023, and a replacement stone cost $6,766 more. Victims told Central Nebraska Today they doubt Lepler can pay restitution.

The other open question is what the case costs Nebraska taxpayers, and Obitley ran the first accounting. At the Nebraska Association of County Officials' published 2024 jail average of $81 a day, the 1,118 days in custody already cost $90,558, and that is a floor. A nine-year prison term at the corrections department's published rate would add roughly $120,000; 15 years of probation far less. Added up, the prison path brings total taxpayer exposure to roughly $210,000 to $230,000, and the probation path to roughly $100,000 to $150,000. Prosecutors will not seek additional jail time, KSNB reported.