Home Funerals: What They Involve and What Your State Requires

Until roughly the middle of the last century, an American funeral usually happened in the front room of a house. The family washed the body, dressed it, sat with it, and buried it. The parlor got renamed the living room partly to stop people associating it with death.

Home funerals never became illegal. Most families just stopped knowing it was an option.

A home funeral, sometimes called a family-directed funeral, means the family cares for the body after death rather than transferring it immediately to a funeral home. The body stays at home for a period of hours or days while people visit, then goes to burial or cremation.^[1]

It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Plenty of families do part of it: keeping the body at home for a night before the funeral home collects it, or washing and dressing the person themselves and letting professionals handle the rest.

Embalming isn’t required for a home funeral. It's rarely required by law at all, and no state requires it routinely.^[2]

In most states, families can handle everything themselves without hiring a funeral director. In about ten states the law requires a funeral director's involvement for specific tasks, usually filing the death certificate, obtaining the burial transit permit, or transporting the body.^[1]

Even in those states a home funeral is still possible. The requirement is narrow, and it covers paperwork and transport rather than banning family care of the body.^[1]

State rules change, so check your own before you plan. The National Home Funeral Alliance maintains a state-by-state guide, and the Funeral Consumers Alliance has local affiliates who know their state's rules in detail.^[2] Your state's broader death law is in the MORTL state guides.

One caution about what you'll find online. Funeral homes sometimes tell families that a funeral director is legally required when that isn't true in their state. Ask for the statute.

The physical work is less clinical than people expect and it's the part families most often say they're glad they did.

• Washing and dressing. Usually with soap and water. Any clothing works, including things a funeral home would refuse to use.
• Positioning. Closing the eyes and mouth soon after death, before the body stiffens, and laying the person flat.
• Cooling. Dry ice or gel packs to keep the body cold. More below.
• Sitting with the body. This is the actual point. People come, stay as long as they want, and leave. Children can be present, and many families find that easier than a viewing at a funeral home.
• Transport. In most states a family can transport the body themselves in a private vehicle with the right permit.

Home funeral guides exist to walk families through this. They aren't providing a licensed service, they're teaching. A death doula often does the same work.

Without embalming, the body is kept cold. Dry ice packed under the torso, or reusable cooling packs, plus a cool room with the heat off.

How long that buys you depends on temperature, the person's condition at death, and the cause. Families commonly keep a body at home for one to three days. Some states set a limit on how long before burial, cremation, or refrigeration is required, so this is another point to check locally.^[1]

What actually happens: the body cools and stiffens within hours, then the stiffness passes. There's usually no strong odor in the first day or two if the body is kept cold. Fluid can leak, which is why absorbent padding is standard.

None of this is dangerous to the people in the house. A body isn’t a public health hazard in ordinary circumstances, and that’s true whether or not the person had an infectious illness at death.^[1]

The body is the flexible part. Every state has rules about the documents, and those you have to get right.

1. Pronouncement of death. Someone with legal authority has to confirm the death. If the person is on hospice, hospice does it. If not, it may be a doctor, a coroner, or a medical examiner.
2. The death certificate. A physician, medical examiner, or coroner signs the cause of death. In the roughly ten states that require it, a funeral director files it.^[1]
3. A burial transit permit. Usually issued by the local registrar. You generally need it to move the body, including to a cemetery or crematory.
4. The cemetery or crematory's own rules. These are private policies rather than law, and they vary. Confirm before the day that they'll accept a body delivered by a family.

Order certified copies of the death certificate while you're at it. Most families need far more than they expect, and the paperwork after a death covers what they're all for.

The median cost of a funeral with viewing and burial was $8,300, and $6,280 with cremation.^[3] A home funeral removes much of the service side of that: no facility fee, no embalming, no viewing charge, often no transport.

What you still pay for: the casket or shroud if you use one, the cemetery plot and opening fee or the crematory fee, certified copies, and dry ice.

Home funerals also pair naturally with green burial, where the body isn't embalmed and is buried in a shroud or simple container. The Green Burial Council certifies cemeteries to a published standard, so you can check a specific one rather than take a claim at face value.^[4] More in the green burial explainer.

Money is a real reason families choose this, and it isn't the main one most give afterward.

Be honest about a few things before you plan one.

It takes people. One person cannot do this alone while grieving. You need several who've agreed in advance.

Everyone has to be on board. A relative who finds it disturbing will find it disturbing on the day, and a death is a bad time to litigate that.

Some deaths rule it out. A death under medical examiner jurisdiction, a badly damaged body, or certain circumstances can make it impractical or impossible.

You can change your mind. Families who start a home funeral and decide partway through to call a funeral home haven’t failed at anything.

If you want it, write it down now and tell the people who'd carry it out. A wish nobody knows about doesn't survive the first hour after a death. Put it in your plan through the letter of instruction, and walk the alternative through how to arrange a funeral.