This fifth and final post in our series regarding the rulemaking proposed on December 9, 2015 on “Cemetery Annual Financial Reports; Commercial Crime Coverage; and Permanent Maintenance Fund Contributions.”

By and large, the proposed rulemaking is a big win for cemeteries of all sizes. By significantly raising the valuations required to be categorized as a small, medium, or large cemetery, many cemeteries will now see themselves exempted from the more onerous aspects of the financial reporting requirements. In addition, all cemeteries will now have longer to file those financial reports. For the largest cemeteries, the big win is in the commercial crime coverage insurance provisions, where these cemeteries will benefit from a cap in the coverage requirement of $500,000, as well as provisions which would allow them to seek a hardship waiver if necessary. Finally, cemeteries with a substantial reliance on pre-need sales will benefit from the clarity provided by the two new methods of making contributions to the permanent maintenance fund.

The only real “losers” in the proposed rulemaking are those cemeteries falling into the newly created category of “non-traditional cemeteries.” Such cemeteries will find themselves under stricter regulation than they were subject to previously, mainly due to the newly imposed requirement that they submit annual CPA financial audits.