Cliff Rohrabacher
05-13-2009, 3:08 PM
I was recently asked to review a package for funeral services with the Neptune Society. This company sells packages to elderly people with the pitch that the company will handle all (every single little detail) of the funeral arrangements and cremation and ash disbursement over water.
The deal looks OK and the price is good.
Except for one rather large problem.
The people who would object to any mishandling and non performance under the agreement are not parties to the written agreement. They are the survivors. This is to say they have no enforceable contract rights. So the Neptune Society can take the money and when the person with whom they had an agreement passes they can quite literally dust their hands of the whole matter.
This society owns and operates funeral service providing companies in several states. They have the capacity to dispose of bodies VIA cremation and it appears that they are doing that part of the deal but, it also appears that they are not doing much more.
If you have an elder who is looking into a pre-paid package for funeral arraingments Make sure they speak to an attorney first.
As the Survivor the best and most certain way you have of obtaining enforcable contract rights is to be a party to the deal and paying for part or all of it VIA check which payment is stipulated to flow from you to the company as "Consideration" for performance of their obligations. You don't just want to write the check, you want to be a party to whom performance under the contract it owed.
It's a great business model.
The deal looks OK and the price is good.
Except for one rather large problem.
The people who would object to any mishandling and non performance under the agreement are not parties to the written agreement. They are the survivors. This is to say they have no enforceable contract rights. So the Neptune Society can take the money and when the person with whom they had an agreement passes they can quite literally dust their hands of the whole matter.
This society owns and operates funeral service providing companies in several states. They have the capacity to dispose of bodies VIA cremation and it appears that they are doing that part of the deal but, it also appears that they are not doing much more.
If you have an elder who is looking into a pre-paid package for funeral arraingments Make sure they speak to an attorney first.
As the Survivor the best and most certain way you have of obtaining enforcable contract rights is to be a party to the deal and paying for part or all of it VIA check which payment is stipulated to flow from you to the company as "Consideration" for performance of their obligations. You don't just want to write the check, you want to be a party to whom performance under the contract it owed.
It's a great business model.