02/12/2025

Support Your Cemetery Bill - HB713 / SB715

Your Association is Working to Pass Legislation

2025 HB 713 / SB 715

As you may know, our association has introduced a bill to make several revisions to the laws that govern our industry. This bill will cut unnecessary regulatory burdens that are harmful to our industry and do not serve consumers. I have attached some talking points that explain this legislation. Here is the link to the bill language on the legislative website.

This bill will be running through the Commerce Committees in both the House and the Senate over the next month before it is voted on by the entire Tennessee General Assembly. We will need significant grassroots support to get this bill over the finish line. To that end, please consider doing five things before the end of the week:

1. Please use this link to identify your State Representative and State Senator using your home address.
2. Please use the same link  to identify your businesses State Representatives and Senators using the address of your office and / or any cemeteries that your company owns.
3. Please take a look at the members of the House and Senate Commerce Committees and make a note of any personal or professional relationships with any of these elected officials. (You might be surprised to know that an old classmate or teammate now serves in the legislature!)  
4. Once you have identified the policymakers that represent your home and business as well as any associates who may serve on the Commerce Committees, please take a moments to send them a quick email or give their office a call before the end of the week.  
5. Please send me a quick email letting me know who you have reached out to and any response that you receive.

Here is a list of talking points about our bill.

This bill brings the laws that govern cemeteries up to date with Tennessee’s southern peers and eliminates outdated regulations that are neither business nor consumer friendly. The Cemetery Association of Tennessee worked with the Department of Commerce and Insurance on this legislation prior to its filing.

• Section 1: Corrects a drafting error from 2022 that was discovered by the Department of Commerce and Insurance.
• Sections 2 - 4: These sections remove the cap on the installation rates for memorials. This change allows us to join all southern states, which have no caps. The bill does not change the existing requirement that the installation charge must be the same for all persons, regardless of the source of the monument. This means, the cemetery owner may not charge the consumer one rate if they buy the monument from the cemetery and another rate if they buy the monument from a monument dealer.
• Section 5: Current law also caps fees for completing and assisting in documents for the sale of an interment right. The current fee ($100) has not been changed in over 20 years. No other business is capped on its fees. This bill would eliminate the cap but require the cemetery to post its documentation fees on its Fee Schedule that must be posted at the cemetery. Most Southern States do not cap document fees. 
• Section 6: The improvement care trust fund was established to help maintain cemetery properties.  At the time the trust fund was created, the Department did not consider that family members may wish to be buried with another family member in the same plot once cremated. This bill removes the requirement for a second deposit into the improvement care trust fund for the sale of additional internment rights. The Department can verify that the deposit was made on the first right of interment.
• Section 7: This section of the bill allows a cemetery to reclaim unused, abandoned interment rights. An unused grave space or space in a community mausoleum is considered “abandoned” only after the cemetery has (1) not had contact with a recorded owner or their beneficiary for 75 years and (2) the cemetery has conducted a reasonable search for the owner/beneficiary by sending a letter to the last known address and posting a description of the space on the cemeteries’ website for a year. The bill does not allow spaces in private (i.e., family) mausoleums, or those that have a memorial installed on the space, to be reclaimed. If an individual or heir provides proof of ownership of a space that was deemed abandoned and sold by the cemetery within 25 years of the cemetery reclaiming the space, the individual is entitled to the value of the space at the time it was originally purchased or resold, whichever is greater.
• Sections 8 - 9: This makes changes to what was formerly known as the “cemetery consumer protection fee.” This bill retitles the fee as an “administrative fee,” which mirrors the similar fee in the preneed funeral statute. The bill also clarifies that cemeteries are only required to pay the fee once per consumer.
• Sections 10 – 11: These sections make very minor changes that clarify that cemeteries sell interment rights, not physical plots of land or other physical locations. “Interment rights” refer to the right to be buried in a particular place, but the location itself remains the property of the cemetery.

All contact information for these policymakers can be found on the legislative website using the links above or this link.

Have questions? Email us at: cemetery-tn@gmail.com

Cindy Foree

Cemetery Association of Tennessee

(615) 714-9605

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