Home Funerals


  • Bay Area Funeral Society

To see what a home funeral looks like, check out the following KQED Quest program:



In the state of California, it is legal to care for your own dead. According to California's "Consumer Guide to Funeral & Cemetery Purchases," the law does not prohibit consumers from preparing their own dead for disposition. If you choose to do this, you must:

  • File a properly completed Certificate of Death, signed by the attending physician or coroner, with the local registrar of births and deaths.
  • Obtain a Permit for Disposition from the local registrar of births and deaths.
  • Provide a casket of suitable container.
  • Make arrangements directly with cemetery or crematory.

You have 8 days to file the Certificate of Death. Moreover, you can bring the body home from the hospital even if you haven't already completed the COD or obtained a Permit of Disposition.

For more information on home funerals contact:

Final Passages
P.O. Box 1721
Sebastopol, CA 95473
707-824-0268

Final Passages is a non-profit educational model program that teaches people about home and family-directed funerals and legalities.

Home and Family Funerals
Jerrigrace Lyons
514 Parquet Street
Sebastopol, CA 95472

Home and Family Funerals provides in-home after-death care and services; assists families as they create and carry out home funerals; sells cardboard cremation caskets; and provides referrals for funerary supplies, caskets, cemeteries, and crematories.

Green Home Funerals
contact@greenhomefunerals.com
Newcomers Kate Handler and Ella Mitchell are ready to guide families through the home funeral process.

ARTICLES AND EBOOKS


Undertaken with Love: A Home Funeral Guide for Congregations and Communities. (ebook)

A Checklist for Planning a Home Funeral. (ebook)

"Home Burials Offer and Intimate Alternative" (July 20, 2009, New York Times)

"Crying and Digging: Reclaiming the Realities and Rituals of Death" (February 6, 2005, Los Angeles Times)

"A Movement to Bring Grief Back Home" (June 5, 2005, Washington Post)

Home Funeral.info (links to numerous articles and educational materials)

Who We Are

  • The Bay Area Funeral Society (BAFS) is a non-profit organization that helps consumers in Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Francisco counties arrange funerals that are dignified and affordable. BAFS is one of more than 100 similar groups across the country, supported by the national Funeral Consumer Alliance (www.funerals.org). We are run solely by volunteers, and have no attachment to the funeral industry or to any religious group.

What We Do

  • We contract with local, independent mortuaries so that our members receive death goods and services at reduced prices. We also engage in consumer-education outreach. This includes group presentations, printed materials, personal consultations, local price surveys and membership benefits.

Our History

  • BAFS grew out of the Berkeley Co-op movement and has been in operation for over fifty years. In the past, our membership roster included the famous author, Jessica Mitford, whose best-selling book, The American Way of Death, exposed the excesses and high-pressure sales tactics of the funeral industry. BAFS continues her work.