h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

According to the Associated Press, the Missouri Supreme Court has been asked to answer the question "When does someone own a casket?"

This debate arises from the state's custom of considering caskets as retail items and collecting sales tax on them. The state's position is that a casket is personal property owned when a contract is signed to purchase it - or at the least when a body is placed inside.

A funeral home in St. Louis filed for a tax refund contending that a casket should be placed into the same category as carpet or kitchen cabinets that are professionally installed inside a home. Once installed (buried), the carpet (casket) becomes part of the real estate and is not subject to a consumer sales tax.

Last February the Department of Revenue rejected the funeral homes request for a refund based upon that argument. However, an administrative hearing judge overturned the decision in August and awarded the funeral home a $101, 565.00 refund. The state has appealed to the Supreme Court.

Complicating the issue is the fact that the a casket remains in the posesion of the funeral home even after the purchase contract is signed. The funeral home, not the customer, insures the casket against loss or damage. "We say the customer doesn't own it until it's buried...."

The state attorney general's office contends that ownership does not require possession or the responsibility of risk. Instead ownership depends on who is making the decisions about the casket and the burial.

I became very interested in the peculiar business of casket sales after my mother's death in 1984. I brought home a catalogue for a well-known brand of caskets (Bates) and read the advertising for the different styles. What I found morbidly interesting was the part about warranties. Bates guaranteed the casket against various failings for something like 50 years. And I thought to myself, how in the world does one check a thing like that? Disinter the casket regularly??

The business of death is very peculiar. They sell these expensive liners for the vaults that have bas-reliefs and all sorts of artistic features. And no one ever even sees them.

I wonder if a body is cremated inside a casket and the ashes aren't buried, if the state can collect tax on both the burned casket and the urn that the ashes are placed in? It wouldn't become part of the real estate in that case. But if the ashes are then buried in a gravesite they would become part of the real estate. So you'd have to pay taxes on the ashes but not on the urn they're put into to be buried.

Ok, I know that caskets aren't cremated with the body, but it makes a better story that way.

Something similar came up on one of the fine art lists recently. Some enterprise is offering a special deal to dead artists, to have facsimiles of their work painted on to their caskets. I said I would like to have my artwork on the inside.

Believe it or not, I actually own an empty crypt in a small mausoleum. Both my parents and my father's parents are buried there, in Lansdale, PA. I inherited the deed, for 6 deluxe (side-on) crypts, originally purchased in the 20's when the mausoleum was built.

I have no intention of winding up there, though.

*Jumps into the convo after Lil mentioned it at the Atelier.*

I remember my mom telling me that before they started putting the caskets into concrete vaults in the ground the caskets were buried directly in the earth. Eventually, the wood would break down and some hapless person walking over the grave would sink into the ground!

I imagine that's why guarantees were instituted.

Yes. *shudders* The consequences of poor workmanship were there for everyone to see.

This *is* morbidly fascinating.

My grandmother pre-ordered her casket. Went for the top of the line deluxe silk and padding and all that. I've never figured out why. No one sees it. And frankly, at the point *you're* in it, you're not going to notice it anyway. A plain pine box would suit just fine for burials.

I guess it's for those left behind. Because to put grandma or junior in a plain pine box shows you don't care, or some such. I personally find that a whole lot of hooey. Which is perhaps why I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered over the Alberton mountains.

A staff member recently lost her granddaughter. The girl - well she was 26 - had CP and had never been able to walk or speak or do anything at all for herself. I couldn't believe how much money they spent onher casket and vault liner. They wanted tp give her a good send off, I guess, but there was no way they could afford to spend as much as they did.

funerals are definitely to make the survivors feel good. And the funeral homes take advantage of people and add in a lot of unnecessary costs. And make you feel guilty if you say no, you don't want the super deluxe highly polished mahogany casket with the triple thick velvet lining.

There are two certainties in life:
1. Death
2. Taxes
I suppose the government is always trying to come up with ways to take advantage of both.

Karen

My grandmother died recently and she was cremated. We had a memorial service for her a couple of weeks later and the urn containing her ashes was sitting up front. After the service, I was helping my uncle (who had lived with my grandmother all his life) clean up, which involved putting the urn in it's velvet bag for transporting home. It somehow felt very weird to be handling that urn. My logical side was saying "it's only ashes", but I still felt uneasy.

It felt even weirder when I found out that between the time of her cremation and the service, her urn had been on her former dresser in her former bedroom (which is where it went back to until the ashes were buried). And we kept referring to the urn as if it was her: "Where shall I put her?" "Oh, put her back on her dresser".

My dad's chiefest fear toward the end of his life was that I would give him a cheap burial. I promised him to follow his wishes and did save for the viewing, which we skipped, because, well, his illnesses had not treated him kindly. Anyway, I gave him the full pharaoh treatment in all other respects, for a cost of nearly $8,000 (it would have been more if we didn't have the crypts already paid for). Copper casket, silk lining -- he wanted one to match the one he gave mother.

In a gesture showing distrust of warranties, now that I think about it, I took a photo of him and mom in their prime, standing in the dining room of the QE II, wrote their essential details on the back, had it laminated, and placed it in the coffin with him. Maybe I was thinking of a century or so into the future when the town might decide to move the mausoleum or something. I've read that the average cemetery has a life span of about 400 years.

GL, so sorry about your grandmother. Frank has said that he wants to be cremated. The kids all threw a fit. So, if he goes fiorst, no matter what I do will be wrong and I'll wind up miserable. Is it true that it's illegal to scatter ashes anymore? I have an aunt who was cremated and the ashes were buried in her husband's grave. I have another aunt who is planning to be buried on top of my uncle. They buried him a couple of feet deeper than usual so there would be room.

One of my girlfriends and I have made a pact that whichever one of us goes first the other one will attend the funeral wearing a feather boa and a tiarra and will sing "So long, it's been good to know ya." We're thinking of reciting a really bad poem, but can't agree on which one.

Re: caskets - my father was cremated, so we got a rather plain casket for him - but then, most congregations in Sweden have this - uh - casket drape? that you can borrow for the funeral ceremony

As for the ashes - at first our mother wanted to have them spread in the 'memorial grove' in the cemetery, but I and my brother insisted on having the urn buried, with a gravestone - and later on she thanked us, because she had a specific place to go to when she was missing him - a place that she could make beautiful, a place where she could reminisce

I think American funeral parlors will rent a casket for veiwing before a person is cremated. We have one cemetery with a mausoleum where you can buy niches for "cremains". I think they cost more than a plot.

I haven't decided if I want to be cremated or buried. But, I'm not getting any younger, so that's something I should start thinking about. A woman who was in my graduating class died this week. Lung cancer. We had a class of 100 - not 99 or 101 - and she's the 5th one to die. Still a low enough number not to panic me.

I intend to be cremated, and have my ashes scattered from Mont Jeau, but then I'm a control freak. I don't want to leave a body behind, it's so untidy.

And Garius's words are echoing in my mind -- "Put her on the mantelpiece..."

It's something you cannot possibly explain to the young (I think e e cummings has a poem about it), what it feels like to watch the older ones peel off and die, until yours is the generation at the head of the column of the living...

A friend of mine and her brother each took half of their father's ashes. She spread hers at Rainbow Falls down at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, and her brother kept his half. That's the way their father wanted it. He wanted some to remain for everyone to focus on, and the some to be spread as far as they could go. She figured the Colorado River would do the job, and he had liked Rainbow Falls. I think maybe that's a good idea, unless you really can't handle the idea of dividing up ashes...

I've always thought the idea of pouring ashes over running water was nice. Better than dumping them out of an airplane. I hadn't heard of dividing ashes before. The thing aboaut cremation is that you can put the ashes someplace that has meaning to the deceased person. With burials you're pretty limited.

True enough. I want my ashes scattered in about thirty places...okay, that may be something of an exaggeration, but still. The Grand Canyon, Diamond Lake, Upper Holland Falls, the Chinese Wall in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, off the Monterey Coast, the Kenai river in Alaska, Blue Mountain in Montana, the Alberton Gorge...so many places, so much water.

How about having a capsule of your ashes shot into space? Wasn't there a firm started by an astronaut in order to provide such a service?

I'll be happy to have my ashes scattered at the top of the Bonito Valley. It's so windy around here that they'll soon be in Hondo.

And the best vengeance story I ever heard was from a Venezualan bloke who wants his ashes blown in his ex-wife's face.

This isn't about cremation, but I remember a story about a woman in Australia who buried her husband, whom she no longer loved, at sea because she knew he would hate it. Apparently they didn't weight him down very well, because a few days later the not grieving widow and her boyfriend went deep sea fishing and caught and reeled him in.