The Illinois Funeral Directors Association has been ordered by the Comptroller of the State of Illinois to repay the underfunded pre need fund in Illinois some ten million dollars. This figure is the approximate amount the the IFDA took in fees for management of the trust. The IFDA has been sued by several people and firms in the state to repay the 59 million dollar deficit.
On Your Funeral Guy’s blog, he brings up the potential that the IFDA may go bankrupt. This would be fortunate for the board of the association and the members of the association. How can these people be trusted. They have clearly mismanaged hundreds of millions of dollars and then took 10 million dollars to do so. Not only that but the IFDA bought insurance policies on members of their own board for some unknown reason. They apparently enticed members of the association to participate in their fraud by buying personal insurance on the member if they placed their money in the state trust.
Someone, somewhere in the IFDA board had to come up with this scheme. So who was responsible? It is not likely that any one person will confess so the entire board will have to assume responsibility. So the IFDA going bankrupt is a good idea. The funeral directors in the state should encourage such action. They need to wipe away any and all ties to this corrupt organization and start again.
Every state funeral board is typically made of a majority of funeral directors and sometimes a consumer advocate, typically hand chosen by the board to mimic their desires. These association have one job. Protect the interests of the funeral directors in their state. They have little interest in protecting consumers, and as far as I have seen never do so. Oh yes, they will rant and rave about the consumer protection laws and directives initiated by the association. But the bottom line is that they do only what is in the best interest of the funeral industry. Often they will even introduce legislation as some kind of consumer protection, when in reality it is only to protect their interest. There are laws in the country that regulate the sale of caskets and vaults that were sold to legislatures as consumer protection yet only gave funeral homes the exclusive right to sell these products. There are also laws that regulate the sale of pre need goods and services that limit who can sell these products and how the money is to be managed. Yet did the consumers benefit from these? Of course not. All funeral associations are solely for the benefit of the industry. CAVEAT EMPTOR.
