As of January 1, 2026, the National Cemetery Scheduling Office will no longer have Saturday hours during which funeral directors can schedule burials.

The scheduling office, part of the U.S. National Cemetery Administration, had previously had Saturday hours but is moving to what it calls a “traditional Monday through Friday schedule.”

In 2026, the office will be open from 8:00 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time Monday through Friday.

More information on scheduling an interment for a veteran or eligible family member at a national cemetery can be found here.

Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands has a mortuary on-site. What is their protocol if a person dies on a plane. A story explains. Chinese villagers protesting forced cremation of their decedents have won a battle with the government. And a woman in Texas is chronicling the lives of regular citizens who are buried in a local cemetery. These stories and more are in the week in funeral news.

NEWS

What Happens If a Passenger Dies on the Plane? An Expert Explains the Protocol
By Natalia Senonayoke (People)
An airport mortuary coordinator is walking through the strict protocols he and his team must follow in the rare instance a plane passenger dies during their flight. Ben Vos is the coordinator at Mortuarium Schiphol (Schiphol Mortuary), a unique facility located on-site at Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands that is completely off the radar of the thousands of travelers that pass through each day. Read more here.

Twice-Sold Grave Belongs to Prominent Oregon Family, Remains Will Be Removed, Judge Decides in Unusual Case
By Zane Sparling (The Oregonian)
The remains of a 20-year-old man in a Portland, OR, grave plot that was accidentally sold twice will be disinterred after a judge found that the original buyers retained their claim to the final resting spot. In a separate December 22, 2025 verdict, a Multnomah County civil jury found that while Skyline Memorial Gardens and Funeral Home was negligent in the double sale, it didn’t inflict “severe emotional distress” on Paula Tin Nyo and that she could not sue in the first place. Read more here.

Investigation Launched as Wrong Body Cremated in Hospital Mortuary Mix-Up
By RSVP Live
A body was cremated by mistake following a mix-up due to human error at a hospital mortuary, and now staff members have been suspended amid an investigation into the incident. Read more here.

She Has a Passion for the Dead and Bringing Them to Life
By Sue Ambrose (The Dallas Morning News)
Three miles south of Fair Park, TX, sits Oakland Cemetery, the final resting place of some of the city’s most recognizable names–Grauwyler, Samuell, Minyard, Zang and many others. Marcia Smith isn’t interested in any of them. Instead, the former newspaper writer turned high school teacher turned genealogist is piecing together the lives of the more ordinary people who lived in Dallas, some buried as long ago as 1895, others as recently as 1997. Read more here.

Chinese Villagers Win Battle Against Forced Cremation
By AFP
Protests in rural China have thwarted government attempts to enforce cremation in place of traditional burials, demonstrators say, as economic pressures fuel unrest in poor areas. Such outbursts of dissent are rare in China, where authorities act swiftly to stamp out civil disobedience both on the ground and online, though monitors say localized protests appear to be increasing. Read more here.

TRENDS

Giving Our Bodies Back to the Earth: The Rise of Natural Burial
By John Christian Phifer and Willow Defebaugh (Atmos)
When my grandfather died, it was a slap in the face from the world. Or maybe a gentle whisper. It was the first time I saw my family really mourn. The first time I saw my father cry. This very stoic man–my grandad was a simple farmer that once ran moonshine and hid it in the hills–his death broke my father open. To see him reveal a part of his real self was one of the most profound things for me to witness at that age. Read more here.

Approximately half of the country’s funeral homes are not providing the technology modern consumers are demanding and not explaining the use of digital products adequately when they are available, according to a study on consumer preferences in funeral service.

The study, conducted by Foresight, a funeral home and cemetery consultant service, and Fortitude, a research and marketing firm, found that “the profession as a whole isn’t very good at delivering technology to the consumer, and the professionals who serve the consumer aren’t very good at explaining it either.”

A total of 49 percent of consumers said the profession gets high marks for providing tech products, while 53 percent praised the staff’s ability to explain its tech offerings, indicating a need for employee training and familiarity with technological offerings, the study found.

Foresight and Fortitude acknowledge that technology “can mean many different things,” but broadly it means everything from online presence to streaming for services and other digital offerings and representations.

An appealing, comprehensive and functional website is crucial to a funeral home’s success, the study found. At least 60 percent of recent customers have conducted online research into funeral home, and 78 percent of future customers said they would engage in online research before choosing a funeral home.

The most important thing consumers seek when doing research online is accessible and transparent pricing, the study found. A total of 67 percent said access to pricing was important, and they are looking for more than just a pdf of the General Price List.

“Ideally, the pricing information should be seamlessly combined with product and service descriptions to make it easier for users to understand the cost impact of their decision,” the study stated.

The website should be an extension of the explanatory part of the business, when the funeral director sits with a family and goes through line items to make sure they understand each item. The more functional and transparent the information is, the more helpful it is when consumers are planning.

“Accurate descriptions of products and services, combined with high-quality visions (pictures and video) should be treated as price-of-entry content for your website,” the study said.

Videos should be a storytelling part of the experience, using key employees to “introduce themselves and share a few key parts of their background and story.” This creates a familiarity so that when a consumer visits, they feel they have already “met” some of the staff.

That visitation is still a must in the funeral profession. At least 87 percent of respondents said they physically visited the funeral home they selected. Also, 36 percent said they visited other locations as well, and the average number of locations consumers visited is three, statistics which bolster the case for a comprehensive approach to marketing and presentation. A consumer likes what they see online, feels familiar with the staff and story of the funeral home and feels comfortable with the explanation of goods and services, including technology-based offerings, once on-site.

Streaming offerings also are considered important by consumers, the study found. While the use of streaming services such as Zoom became more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, its use has not gone away as in-person gatherings returned. In 2022, 40 percent of consumers said they expected streaming services to be made available, indicated that funeral homes needed to be “ready and able” to provide online attendance at services when consumers seek it.

“Better yet,” the study said, “simply include streaming with every service as a means to distinguish yourself from your competition.”

The study also recommends more digital offerings when it comes to merchandising. Half of responding funeral homes rely on digital materials to present casket and container offerings. While this does not eliminate the need for printed materials, digital “self-guided tours” through offerings can be helpful, and digital showrooms–complete with sound, video and images–can be appealing to consumers. The study also suggests that QR codes for accessing information from their cell phones provide convenience and another point of entry for a funeral home’s services.

Because of the traditional reliance on in-person meetings and relationships, the funeral industry has not completely embraced technology, the study stated.

“As a result, we are often behind many other consumer-facing industries when it comes to using technology to meet consumer needs,” the study concludes.” While that may have worked for a time, that proverbial bill has come due.”

New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association members who are interested in learning more about natural organic reduction are in luck. They are eligible for a special discount if they attend an NOR conference in February 2026.

TerraCon, billed as the largest NOR conference in the United States, is taking place from February 2 to 4, 2026 in Tacoma, WA. The conference promises to explain both the “processes and possibilities” for New Jersey funeral directors who may be considering offering NOR to consumers.

New Jersey legalized NOR in September 2025, and the state is currently in the process of crafting regulations to oversee the process. The law will take effect in the summer of 2026.

NOR is the process of controlled supervised decomposition of a human body resulting in the conversion of human remains into a soil-like product. By law, the process requires oversight by licensed funeral directors and will be regulated as a mortuary process–not a form of final disposition.

During the TerraCon conference, attendees will learn more about NOR from international experts who are on the cutting edge of natural organic reduction and its technology.

NJSFDA members will receive a 50 percent discount if they attend. To register, visit terracon.life and use the code JERSEYGREEN50.

The judge hearing the case of the two owners of a Colorado funeral home where 191 bodies were found piled up has accepted new plea deals from the couple that will keep them in prison for decades.

District Court Judge Eric Bentley had previously rejected plea arrangements for Jon and Carrie Hallford, who owned Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, saying they were too lenient given the severity of their crimes and the impact those offenses had on the families of the decedents whose remains were found in the facility.

With the new plea deals, Jon Hallford faces between 30 and 50 years in prison and Carrie Hallford could get between 25 and 35 years in prison, according to the 4th Judicial District Office of the District Attorney in Colorado.

The Hallfords earlier had agreed to sentences of up to 20 years in prison, but victim statements swayed Bentley to reject those agreements. Even the new agreements met with displeasure from the families of the decedents, who wanted both Hallfords to face 191 years in prison, one year for each body discovered. Families had said they wanted the case to go to trial.

“This case is not about convenience or efficiency,” Crystina Page told The Colorado Sun. Her son’s body had been found in the funeral home. “It is about human beings who were treated as disposable. Accepting a plea agreement sends the message that this level of abuse is negotiable. We reject that message.”

The Hallfords were charged with scores of counts of abuse of corpse following the discovery of piles of human remains stacked in their funeral home in 2023. An investigation found that the Hallfords sometimes returned dry concrete mix to family members instead of cremated remains.

The couple also both pleaded guilty to federal charges of wire fraud in October 2024 in connection with the fraudulent acquisition of Small Business Association loans designed to provide relief for businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Hallfords’ case was cited as one of the reasons for an overhaul of Colorado’s funeral industry regulations, which were among the most lax in the country. Funeral directors in the state were not licensed, a fact that led some advocates to point out that, although the Hallfords faced criminal charges, there was little the state could do to sanction them as funeral directors.

The state in 2024 adopted a sweeping reform of funeral industry regulations, which called for the licensing of funeral directors, along with basic education and continuing education requirements. Those reforms, however, will not take effect until 2027.

Crematories in Washington State have been unable to upgrade their facilities with cleaner, more energy-efficient retorts because of environmental regulations, effectively throttling a growing cremation industry in the western state.

Washington is one of the country’s leaders in the percentage of deaths resulting in cremations, but in many cases, the equipment used is decades old, according to a Pacific NW magazine story.

Those older machines take longer to cremate remains, use more energy and have more emissions, but they are also grandfathered in by the state’s environmental regulations. Newer retorts, however, face more stringent regulations, and crematories are having difficulties getting permits to use them.

That conundrum is leaving funeral directors frustrated.

“Are we going to impede technology that, on aggregate, is going to lower emissions?” Corey Gaffney, a Tacoma, WA, funeral director, asked in a previous Pacific NW story. “Washington could become like Cuba: You’ll have a bunch of old vehicles and nobody’s able to upgrade.”

As Washington pushes toward an 80 percent cremation rate, the delay in permitting for new retorts is leading to concerns that funeral homes will not be able to keep up with demand. Funeral homes in Washington are permitted to operate crematories, unlike New Jersey where the funeral homes, except in cases where the facilities are grandfathered, are not allowed to operate crematories.

Consumer advocacy groups and funeral directors have petitioned various agencies and boards in Washington to address the problem, but there has been no change so far. Meanwhile, the deathcare system in the state is becoming increasingly stressed by the lack of upgrades and capacity.

“All in all, it’s just a powder keg,” Gaffney told Pacific NW.