Funeral Pre Planning

By pre-paying your funeral, you not only remove the financial burden from your family, but also protect those funds from being lost in the event you require care in a nursing home, or from some other catastrophic expense.

Funding your funeral through Kearney Funeral Homes not only lifts the financial burden of the funeral from your loved ones, but also provides you with value added benefits. By taking time now to collect funeral cost information and calmly making choices related to your own funeral arrangements, you’ll be protecting your family against the stress of having to make these decisions at a time of extreme emotional stress. This way you can carefully choose specific items you want and need… and pay for them now. Prepaid Investments through funeral homes allows families to fund their funerals in advance through different investment vehicles.

Kearney Funeral Homes funding plans include Life Insurance and Annuity options as well as Bank Trust Accounts that offer single(one-time) payment or convenient payment plans up to 10 years. In addition, these products don’t require you to receive a 1099 form each year!

Pre-Planning your funeral can further be broken down into two separate functions:

Step 1: Gather Information.

This step involves simply capturing biographical information about your life, career, and family. In short, all the things you want others to know and remember- things like, what was special to you(sunsets, sunrises, flowers, etc), hobbies, sports, church, social and service organizations you belonged to and enjoyed.

Step 2: Make Arrangements.

In this step, you sit down with one of our funeral directors and make choices about your services and products. You will decide whether you will be having a service with burial or a service followed by cremation, what type of casket or urn, what type of burial vault or urn vault. We will explain all of the options, outline the costs, and make helpful suggestions. It’s painless and it only takes from 1 to 2 hours to complete.

How Do You Pre-Pay for A Funeral?

One way to pre-pay for a funeral is to use such methods as Life Insurance, Annuity options, or Bank Trust Accounts.

Pre-funding Through Life Insurance

Pre-funding funerals is a growing trend in America because of the peace of mind that comes from having one’s affairs in order. Funding those arrangements with insurance coverage or a trust are the two ways we handle pre-funding.

Your Funding Is Secure

Your funding is backed by a national industry leader for many years providing preneed insurance with thousands of policies in force. They consistently earn high marks for financial stability from the top financial ratings companies in the country.

Tax Free Value, Tax Free Benefits

Our plan provides life insurance benefits that are exempt from federal income tax when paid to a named beneficiary. Neither the increasing value of the coverage nor the total benefits paid at the time of death are federal income taxable.

Why Plan Ahead?

Planning in advance of need provides peace of mind. The death of a loved one is a time of great loss and advance planning can reduce stress for your family with the knowledge that your preplan has been completed. This allows your loved ones to devote more time to coping and understanding the loss and less time concerned with funeral arrangements and financial details.

Merchandise and Funeral Cost

Your Funeral Director understands that your personal choices are of the utmost importance. Your Funeral Director will meet with you to show the quality merchandise, assist you with the selection of the necessary merchandise and help you make the proper arrangements. Through pre-planning the cost of a funeral will be controlled. Merchandise selection during your pre-planning helps insure that you do not exceed what you want to pay. Pre-payment also offsets the risk of rising funeral costs in the future due to inflation.

Uesful Links

• Survivor Benefits
• Cemetery Services
• Burials
• Presidential Memorial Certificates
  Cemeteries
• Nationwide Gravesite Locator
• Burial Flags
• Burial Allowance

Legal Advice

Before getting in touch with a lawyer there are several important documents that you need to gather. 

These include:

Bank Accounts

What is to be done with bank accounts after a death varies regionally.  In some regions, bank accounts are automatically frozen after a death.  To avoid any complications, the bank should be notified immediately, and you should find out the procedures for releasing these funds, and how to set up a new account for funds received after the death.

Death Certificates

A Certified Death Certificate is necessary before anything can be done.

Wills

Everyone knows they should have a will, but the vast majority – about 70% of us – do not.  Writing a will is easy and inexpensive, and once you are done you can rest easy knowing your hard earned money and property will be distributed according to your wishes.

Probate

Probate is the legal process that transfers the legal title of property from the estate of the deceased to their beneficiaries.

Executors

An executor is the personal representative of your estate.  They are the person in charge of taking control of your assets, paying off any debts, and distributing assets to your beneficiaries per the terms and conditions of your will.