After the family’s baby died shortly after birth, they turned to the funeral home in Fort Worth to cremate their child. Because the baby was premature and very small, the cremation was only going to cost about $180. The family was prepared to pay it themselves so they could bring their baby home and begin to grieve.
The funeral home steered them a different way. Rather than simply performing the cremation, it told the family the state would cover the cost, and the family eventually agreed to that route. Then the delays began, the funeral home said it was waiting on the state to pay. When the grandmother asked, more than once, whether the family could just pay the $180 themselves so they could finally receive their grandbaby’s cremains, the funeral home refused.
The excuse later changed. The funeral home told the family it could not release the cremains because it was waiting on a death certificate to be signed. Months after the baby’s death, the family still has not received their child’s cremains, and has been left unable to lay their baby to rest or find any closure.
We are pursuing claims against the funeral home on behalf of the family. What they describe is not a single mistake but a pattern: a funeral home that would not perform a simple, inexpensive cremation, would not accept the family’s offer to pay for it directly, and offered one changing reason after another for why a grieving mother could not have her baby back.
Returning a child’s cremains to the family that entrusted the funeral home with them is the most basic obligation a funeral business can have. Holding those cremains for months behind a series of excuses, first payment, then paperwork, compounds an already unbearable loss.
We are pursuing claims for negligence and for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to perform the cremation services the funeral home agreed to provide and to do so in a good and workmanlike manner. We are demanding that the funeral home account for the months of delay and the refusal to return the family’s baby.
No family should have to beg a funeral home to give their child back, or to be allowed to pay a $180 bill they offered to cover from the start. A funeral home that takes in a family’s baby has to return that baby, and answer for the months it did not.
We are pursuing claims for negligence and for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to perform the cremation services the funeral home agreed to provide and to do so in a good and workmanlike manner. We are demanding that the funeral home account for the months of delay and the refusal to return the family’s baby.
No family should have to beg a funeral home to give their child back, or to be allowed to pay a $180 bill they offered to cover from the start. A funeral home that takes in a family’s baby has to return that baby, and answer for the months it did not.
