When a family already knows the plan, they can spend the first days after a death doing what they need to do: grieving, gathering, telling stories about the person they lost. They are not sitting in an arrangement room making decisions about caskets and music and obituary copy while shock is still running through them. Somebody loved them enough to handle that ahead of time. That is what pre-need gives a family.
In fact, it reminds me of a cool story I heard from an agent. A younger man dies, and his sister begins to panic. She has no idea where to even start, so she calls the person she knows at the funeral home. The funeral planning counselor. In this case, there was no official funded plan, but the deceased brother had an inkling a few years before and put a folder together with all the details and reserved the back corner of his closet for the suite he wanted to be buried in. It turned a panicked, grief-clouded family into a room full of gratitude and they moved forward with all of the details already in place.
That’s why it’s important to understand that the product you’re offering is peace of mind for the person who plans, and a gift of love to the family who won’t have to make the hard calls in the worst week of their lives. The paperwork, the trust account, the insurance policy, the contract: all of that exists to protect the gift. Sell the gift. Protect it by keeping it clean.
What happens when the gift is betrayed
A funeral director in Jamestown, Tennessee is facing a 52-count indictment. Investigators allege he filed death claims on living pre-need policyholders, including one on his own wife. The alleged scheme surfaced only when a living client tried to transfer her policy and the carrier discovered a death claim had already been paid on her. The carrier acknowledged it does not require death certificates to validate these claims and that it relies on professional trust.
Now, the overwhelming majority of people in this profession would never consider something like this. Most pre-need agents and funeral directors are doing right by families every single day.
But the damage a case like this does to public confidence in pre-need is real regardless of how rare the conduct is. the media loves to blow these stories up. Families who read that story ask themselves whether their plan is safe. They wonder whether their money is where they were told it would be. They wonder whether the person they sat across from was being straight with them.
People bought peace of mind. When something shakes that, it shakes the whole profession. That is reason enough to take the conversation about transparency seriously.
Protect the gift: make it easy to verify
Transparency is what protects the product. Showing a client where their funds are held is not an invitation to doubt you. It is proof that you have nothing to hide and everything to offer.
Three practical moves that matter more than most agents think:
Show clients where their funds are held, in plain English. Not the regulatory language, not the boilerplate. Walk them through it in words that make sense to a 70-year-old who has never thought about how a trust account works.
Give them their contract and go through it together. Do not hand over a folder and move on. Sit with them. Read the key points out loud. Answer every question before they have to ask it twice.
Invite them to check on it any time. Tell them directly: if you ever want to know where this stands, call me. That one sentence does more for confidence than a brochure ever will.
A client who knows where their money is, has a copy of their contract, and has been told they can call anytime is a client who sleeps better. That is the product working exactly as promised.
Five questions buyers are already asking
Consumer research on how families compare pre-need plans shows five questions coming up consistently. Every agent should be able to answer all five in plain English, because each one is really a version of the same question: will my family be okay?
How are the funds held under state requirements? Families want to know the money is somewhere accountable, not sitting in a general account.
What costs remain for the family at the time of death? Even a locked-in price guarantee often leaves something on the table. Be honest about what that is.
Does the price guarantee cover all services? The word “all” is doing a lot of work in some contracts. Families deserve to understand what they are actually guaranteeing.
What happens to the contract if the buyer moves states? This is a real concern for couples in their sixties who are not certain where they will be living in ten years. Answer it before they ask.
What happens if death occurs early, before the plan is fully funded? This one carries the most emotional weight. Answer it warmly, not with legalese.
Keep in mind that answers vary by state and by carrier. The job is to know the answers for your specific program and give them clearly.
Language that matches the gift
Recently, a story hit the wires about how a funeral home rebranded as a “Deathcare Solutions” operation and started calling preplanning “legacy planning.” A 76-year-old drove past the building three times thinking it was an insurance company. She was not wrong to be confused.
Language that works for internal industry conversations does not always work for the people we are trying to serve. Older adults, who are the primary audience for pre-need, use plain words. Peace of mind. Caring for your family. Having a plan. Not being a burden. Those are the phrases that land because they match what the person sitting across from you is actually feeling.
Talk about the gift in the words someone would use to describe it to a friend.
Use the tailwind
NFDA’s 2026 public relations campaign has produced 2,691 media placements through September 15th, reaching a potential audience of over 5.2 billion. Advance planning is one of its core topics. Stories about pre-need are running in local papers, on regional television, in places where the families you are trying to reach are actually paying attention.
Every national story is a local opening. When a piece runs on planning ahead, it gives you a reason to reach out to someone who has been on your mind. A simple opener works fine: “I saw a story this week about planning ahead. It reminded me of you, and I was just checking-in to see if I could answer any questions about your plan and to find out when you plan to complete it and how I can help.”
That is how a conversation starts. The NFDA is spending real money and real effort to create those moments. Use them.
A word to families
Planning ahead is one of the kindest things you can do for the people you love. The decision you make in a quiet hour, when there is no urgency and no grief, is the decision that takes the weight off your family in the hardest week they will face together.
There is legislation in committee right now, HR 2436, that would allow Health Savings Accounts to cover up to $5,000 of death care costs on a tax-free basis. It is not law yet, and no one should plan around it. For guidance on HSA rules and tax implications, talk to a tax professional who knows your situation. What the bill does signal is that more families and more lawmakers are thinking seriously about how to plan for these costs ahead of time. That conversation is shifting.
If you have been putting this off, the easiest first step is a conversation. Ask a parent, a spouse, a close friend: what would you want us to know?
That question is enough to start.
Peace of mind does not arrive with the signed contract. It arrives the moment a person believes their family will be taken care of. Everything you do in a pre-need program, the transparency, the plain language, the willingness to answer every question before it gets asked twice, either protects that belief or erodes it.
When a family leaves your office, what are they taking with them?
-John