The daughter’s mother passed away at home in Round Rock in August 2020. As her mother’s only surviving authorizing agent, the daughter arranged a funeral and cremation through the funeral home, with her mother’s ashes to be returned to her after the service.
About two weeks after the funeral, she called to ask whether her mother’s ashes were ready. A representative told her they were waiting on a physician’s signature before the ashes could be released. Within the hour, the funeral home called back to say the ashes were suddenly ready. Something about that felt wrong to her, but when she arrived, the funeral home presented an urn it said held her mother, in a purple bag with her mother’s pearls resting on top, and her worry eased.
She took the ashes home and set them in her living room. The unease came back. Looking closely, she found another woman’s name printed on the container, along with an identification number from a crematory. She realized she had been given someone else’s ashes.
When she called the funeral home, the owner told her not to worry, she had the right ashes, he said, just the wrong box. That was not true. Another representative later admitted the funeral home had delivered the wrong ashes to her and had never bothered to correct the mistake. The ashes she had carried home belonged to another woman the funeral home had cremated, in fact, a member of the owner’s own family.
We filed suit in Williamson County and retained an independent, licensed funeral-service expert to review the case. He concluded that the funeral home failed to meet the standard of care required of funeral professionals: it did not maintain positive identification of the ashes in its care, released this mother’s ashes to a family unrelated to her, and handed her daughter a different person’s ashes while representing them as her mother’s.
The funeral home’s excuses did not hold up either. The “physician’s signature” the family was told they were waiting on had already been provided ten days before the funeral, there was no such holdup. And the owner’s claim that the family had the right ashes in the wrong box was, in the expert’s opinion, an untrue and deceptive statement, the kind of dishonest conduct in funeral service that Texas law prohibits.
We brought claims for negligence and for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. We made the funeral home account for cremating and releasing ashes without keeping track of whose they were, for handing a grieving daughter a stranger’s ashes as though they were her mother’s, and for trying to talk her out of what she had already discovered for herself.
When a family pays a funeral home to cremate their mother, getting her ashes, and only her ashes, back is the most basic promise it makes. A daughter should never have to be the one who catches the mistake.
We brought claims for negligence and for violations of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. We made the funeral home account for cremating and releasing ashes without keeping track of whose they were, for handing a grieving daughter a stranger’s ashes as though they were her mother’s, and for trying to talk her out of what she had already discovered for herself.
When a family pays a funeral home to cremate their mother, getting her ashes, and only her ashes, back is the most basic promise it makes. A daughter should never have to be the one who catches the mistake.
