Funeral directors who agree to cremate or bury New Zealanders who die with no money and no one to claim them are writing off thousands of dollars a time, and their national association says public agencies are to blame.
The Funeral Directors Association told RNZ on Saturday night that members who take on these cases, known in the trade as indigent funerals, are being left out of pocket by the way Work and Income and some councils handle the costs. The work is voluntary. Funeral homes are usually asked to step in by a rest home or hospital when a body goes unclaimed, and RNZ reported that the losses are leading more of them to say no.
Jim Goddin, who owns Rosetown Funerals in Te Awamutu, said he and his staff carried out 11 indigent funerals in the year to June. “I believe it is an important service to the community and one that deserves to be carried out with compassion and professionalism,” he told RNZ.
He said many funeral homes turn the work down because of the effort involved and the uncertainty of being paid. “These cases often require many hours of administration and investigation, with no guarantee that the funeral director will recover their costs,” Goddin said. That can mean dealing with police, doctors, hospitals, Health New Zealand, lawyers, the Public Trust, Work and Income and local councils, and sometimes going to the dead person’s home with police to search for details of next of kin.
The bills are real. RNZ put the cheapest caskets at around $400, certification at $200 and a hearse at $300 a trip. Council cremation fees run from $647 in Rotorua to $1300 in Invercargill. Once wages and fuel are added, a funeral home is typically out $2000 to $3000 depending on where it is, and that is before any professional fee for the funeral director’s own time.
Government help exists but does not close the gap. Work and Income pays a funeral grant of up to $2697 for deaths from natural causes, and ACC pays up to $8236 when the death was an accident.
In Christchurch, Simplicity Funerals manager Jamie Harvey said his branch carried out 22 indigent funerals in the year to June. “We do take this on as we believe everyone should be given the respect and dignity even if there is no one to be there,” he said. Even with the Work and Income grant, Harvey estimated the branch wrote off $1500 to $2000 each time, at least $33,000 over the year.
Part of the problem, he said, is timing. A body can lie unclaimed in a morgue for days or weeks, and in that time automatic bills can drain the dead person’s bank account. When the funeral home then applies for the grant it can be turned down because the person had money at the moment they died, even though that money is gone.
The Ministry of Social Development, which runs Work and Income, said every application was considered case by case and that it had no discretion on this point. “This means that if there were enough funds in the estate to cover funeral costs, even if these have since been spent to cover other debts, we are still bound by legislation to assess eligibility based on the original amount,” the ministry told RNZ. It also said its grant “is not intended to cover the whole cost” of a funeral.
Some councils are also making sure their own fees come out of any grant first. Funeral Directors Association chief executive Gillian Boyes said that was at odds with the law. Section 49 of the Burial and Cremation Act 1964 says a council running a cemetery or crematorium “may, and upon an order signed by a Justice shall” allow the body of any poor person to be buried or cremated free of charge. Boyes reads that as a clear signal that councils should not be charging funeral homes for these deaths. “We don’t believe this is in line with the intent of the act,” she said.
Tauranga City Council and Dunedin City Council both disagreed. Tauranga said the law “does not require TCC to provide a free cremation service on request” and that any ACC or Work and Income entitlement is part of deciding whether a charge can be met. Dunedin pointed to a 2012 Supreme Court case on who has the right and duty to bury a family member, which it said confirmed the Act works as a safety net that applies only where there is not enough money available. Cremation fees have been a sore point in Tauranga before, with families driving to Hamilton for cheaper cremations earlier this year.
The Law Commission reviewed the 62-year-old Act and recommended that councils have a duty to dispose of the body of anyone with no one else available to do it, funded if necessary by Work and Income. Boyes told RNZ most of the Commission’s recommendations have not been acted on, and that the association does not agree with that particular one.
Her wider argument is about who should carry the cost of a public service. The people involved very likely paid rates and taxes during their lives, yet the loss falls on private businesses. “We think every New Zealander deserves dignity in death,” Boyes said. “That includes those who die with nothing and no one.”
The association expects the problem to grow. Boyes said indigent deaths will rise alongside a forecast 44 percent increase in annual deaths over the next 20 years, from 37,500 last year to 54,000 in 2045. At the same time people are living longer, which means partners and close relatives may already have died by the time someone needs a funeral. That shift is part of the story NEWS WIRE told in When New Zealand turns old, and the changing causes behind those deaths are charted in How we die changed in New Zealand.
Goddin warned that without a lasting funding fix, “more funeral homes may decide they are no longer able to undertake this work”. Harvey was blunter, telling RNZ that “funeral homes cannot afford to be a charity” and asking what would happen to hospital mortuaries if every funeral home refused. The story was also carried by 1News on Sunday.
For now the arrangement rests on goodwill. Funeral homes keep saying yes because they believe no one should leave the world without a proper farewell, while councils and the ministry say they are following the law as written. With the population ageing and more people dying without family, the question of who pays is not going away.
Should councils waive cremation and burial fees for people who die with nothing, or should the Work and Income grant be lifted to cover the real cost? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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