Planning your life celebration or funeral often relieves your family of a burden at an emotional time, and it also gives you an opportunity to express your desires. Most funeral homes encourage people to plan their funerals, and will answer your questions about services, processes and costs.

Many offer Mortuary Trusts. A mortuary trust is a pre-paid funeral contract between a person and a funeral home. The buyer may or may not be the person who receives the funeral services at death.

The Maine Funeral Board has a standard form to be used for any Mortuary Trust (pre-paid funeral). Be sure that your agreement has the words “Maine Mortuary Trust Agreement” at the top, and read the whole contract.

There are some advantages of a Mortuary Trust:

• prices can be guaranteed
• decisions made ahead of time relieve the family and avoid high-pressure sales at a sad time
• Mortuary Trusts are exempt assets under MaineCare up to $12,000, which means the asset doesn’t count when determing financial eligibility.

There are some disadvantages as well:

• the trusts are generally irrevocable, which means you usually can’t get your money back, though you can often transfer to a different funeral home
• you maynot be able to transfer the Mortuary Trust out of state
• if you decide to change from a standard buriel to something less expensive, like cremation, you probably won’t get any money back