The family’s father passed away in June 2023. His children arranged his cremation and final disposition with the funeral home. One of them signed the authorization to cremate and was the only person authorized to receive their father’s cremains, and the children alone coordinated the services with the funeral home.
Without the family’s permission or even their knowledge, the funeral home went around them. It communicated and coordinated with the decedent’s stepsister to obtain his death certificate — and the death certificate came back incorrect.
Then the funeral home failed to return all of their father’s cremains to the family. Without authorization, it released some of his cremains to the stepsister, and those cremains have allegedly been buried without the family’s consent. The children who arranged everything, and who alone had the right to receive their father, never got all of him back.
We filed suit in Crosby County. The funeral home had a signed cremation authorization identifying exactly one person entitled to receive the cremains, and the children alone had coordinated the arrangements. Despite that, the funeral home dealt with a stepsister it was never authorized to deal with — producing an incorrect death certificate — and released part of the father’s cremains to her without obtaining any written delegation, consent, or permission from the family, and without ever notifying them.
When a funeral home holds a signed authorization, it knows precisely who is entitled to a loved one’s cremains and who is not. Splitting a father’s cremains and handing part of him to an unauthorized person is not a paperwork slip. It is the one thing a crematory is trusted never to do.
We brought claims for negligence, negligent misrepresentation, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including unconscionable conduct and the failure to perform cremation services in a good and workmanlike manner. We are making the funeral home account, on the record, for dealing with an unauthorized stepsister, for the incorrect death certificate, for releasing a father’s cremains without consent, and for never returning all of him to the family who had the sole right to receive him.
Children who entrust a funeral home with their father are owed their father back — all of him, and only to them.
We brought claims for negligence, negligent misrepresentation, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including unconscionable conduct and the failure to perform cremation services in a good and workmanlike manner. We are making the funeral home account, on the record, for dealing with an unauthorized stepsister, for the incorrect death certificate, for releasing a father’s cremains without consent, and for never returning all of him to the family who had the sole right to receive him.
Children who entrust a funeral home with their father are owed their father back — all of him, and only to them.
