The daughter’s mother passed away on April 21, 2023. The daughter contracted with the funeral home to prepare her mother’s body, including embalming, and to handle her funeral and final disposition, for a contracted price of $8,000.
While the funeral home had her mother’s body, it refused the daughter access to see her, despite repeated requests. Not until May 5, two weeks after her mother’s death, the day before the funeral, was she finally allowed in. What she found was a body wrapped in plastic in various places, in poor condition, and emitting a foul smell.
At the funeral service the next day, the funeral home roped off her mother’s casket and stationed two bodyguards next to it, preventing the daughter, and every other family member and friend, from going near. A daughter stood at her own mother’s funeral and was not allowed close enough to grieve or say goodbye. Then the funeral home charged $20,000 for its services: more than twice the amount of the contract.
We filed suit in Harris County. The funeral home was hired to do one job: properly and timely embalm, store, and care for this mother’s body, and give her family a dignified service. Instead, the condition of the body the daughter finally saw, and the funeral home’s two weeks of refusals before that, point to failures in embalming, storage, and basic care. And at the service itself, the same funeral home that had kept the daughter away from her mother made sure no one else could get near her either.
A family hires a funeral home so they can see their loved one, mourn her, and say goodbye. This funeral home took the family’s money, denied them all three, and then more than doubled the bill.
We brought claims for negligence, negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to perform funeral services in a good and workmanlike manner and the unconscionable overcharge. We are making the funeral home account, on the record, for the condition of this mother’s body, the two weeks her daughter was kept from her, the rope and bodyguards at her funeral, and the $20,000 it charged on an $8,000 contract.
A daughter’s last moments with her mother are not the funeral home’s to take, and a grieving family’s bill is not its to double.
We brought claims for negligence, negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract, and violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, including the failure to perform funeral services in a good and workmanlike manner and the unconscionable overcharge. We are making the funeral home account, on the record, for the condition of this mother’s body, the two weeks her daughter was kept from her, the rope and bodyguards at her funeral, and the $20,000 it charged on an $8,000 contract.
A daughter’s last moments with her mother are not the funeral home’s to take, and a grieving family’s bill is not its to double.
