What is perpetual care

Hart Funeral Home Staff. Your first name. Your last name. Your phone. Perpetual care or prepaid continued maintenance shall be deemed to include the filling of the grave, the placing of top soil upon the grave, seeding the grave with grass and watering and cutting the grass.

Perpetual care and maintenance of such open space areas shall be provided for and an operational plan shall be submitted for specific approval and inclusion in the terms of the permit. Sample 1. Sample 2. Sample 3. Without the income from perpetual care trusts it would be very difficult for cemeteries to cover the cost of maintenance from current operating revenue. This is especially true for cemeteries that have sold out and are closed to additional interments.

In some cases, cemeteries have tried billing families annually for maintenance, but this is a costly process and over time becomes impractical as relatives pass away.

Perpetual care funds are a much better solution to covering maintenance costs over the long term. Fortunately, people are living longer. However, as a result, the need for death care services is being delayed beyond the time expected by many cemeteries which opened well before life expectancies improved considerably. If cemeteries relied on current revenue to cover the costs of maintenance, the slower revenue growth resulting from longer life spans would present a difficult challenge.

Income from perpetual care trusts provides the certainty of funding needed to survive changes in demographic factors. Changes in market trends like demographics can have a profound impact on the ability of cemeteries to provide adequate maintenance without income from perpetual care funds.

The growing trends in cremations and lower spending on death care services is impacting sales of higher value grave sites and accessories such as caskets and burial vaults. Cemeteries need the reliability of income from perpetual care trusts to ensure adequate maintenance in the long run. Follow John on Twitter JohnMatarese. Actions Facebook Tweet Email. By: John Matarese. Overgrown on Memorial Day Generations of Debbie Stehlin's family members, including military veterans, are buried in a peaceful hillside cemetery.

But Stehlin was heartbroken when she recently found the grass over a foot tall. What really troubled her though was that her family paid for perpetual care of their graves. It turns out decades later that perpetual is not the same as eternal. Copyright Scripps Media, Inc.