The casket war has also hit South Carolina, where a judge recently struck down the requirement that casket dealers have embalming rooms, chapels and hearses. To sell caskets, however, a person must still be a licensed funeral director. And in August, a federal judge ruled that Tennessee's funeral director law violated the 14th Amendment's protection from arbitrary regulation. A federal court also recently tossed out a Georgia law prohibiting casket sales by any entity other than a funeral home, calling the law a blatant restraint of trade. We advertise on TV about 60 times a day.
People are tired of being dictated to by the funeral industry.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' consumer expenditure survey, funeral spending is on the decline, dropping an average of 7 percent annually since the mid-1980s. Some industry experts say the high cost of dying is why cremation is on the rise nationwide, even in the South, where traditional burial is usually preferred. The development of an independent casket industry is part of a larger movement of families playing a bigger role in their loved ones' deaths. I think we will see more boomers changing the way funerals are handled and see more people having at-home funerals. When Stacy Black and Jeff Esley's father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, they decided that his funeral should be in keeping with the way he lived life, and not take place in the decorous anonymity of a funeral home.