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Prepaid Funeral Plans in Berks County: What the Law Protects

Preplanning a funeral in Berks County is free; prepaying is a separate decision. What Pennsylvania law requires of money paid to a licensed funeral director, what the contract decides, cemetery purchases, the Medical Assistance burial reserve, and what to ask before paying.

Berks Connect Blog|Published November 10, 2026
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Preplanning your funeral with a Berks funeral home costs nothing: you write down what you want and give copies to whoever will make the calls. A prepaid funeral is a separate decision: in Pennsylvania, money you pay a licensed funeral director on a pre-need contract, a funeral paid for before it's needed, goes promptly into an escrow or trust account at a Pennsylvania bank, which can release it only for your funeral. Whether you can change it later depends on which version you sign, revocable or irrevocable; once any three-business-day cancellation window your form gives after signing has passed, the one cancellation state law itself provides for a buyer who has paid in full is a move out of state.

The county funeral homes page lists the Berks homes with phone numbers and reviews.

Preplanning is free, and it's the part that spares your family.

Several Berks funeral homes post a free preplanning form or checklist on their sites, and the Pennsylvania Department of Aging publishes a free Funeral Planning Worksheet.

Give copies to your family and your attorney rather than leaving your wishes only in your will or a safe deposit box, review the plan every few years, and tell your family if you've prepaid. Our post on what a will costs in Pennsylvania covers the will itself.

How Pennsylvania protects prepaid funeral money.

The escrow rule is the heart of it: the State Board of Funeral Directors' rules say every dollar goes in, 100 percent, including any arrangement fee, and the interest stays with the principal.

Within 90 days the director reports the bank and the account to the Board, and you, your heirs and your executor can see it. A director's license can be checked in PALS, the Department of State's online lookup.

The table sets the three ways the money can be held side by side.

How the money is held What the law requires What to ask before you sign
Paid to a licensed funeral director under a pre-need contract All of it, promptly, into an escrow or trust account at a Pennsylvania bank, used only for your funeral; the interest stays with it; the account follows the business if the home is sold Whether the contract is revocable or irrevocable; the bank's name; whether the price is guaranteed, and what isn't
A preneed insurance policy Governed by the policy's own terms; the federal Funeral Rule, the price-list rule, doesn't apply to insurance Who owns the policy; who the beneficiary is; what it pays at death; what happens if you stop paying; what you get back if you cancel
Cemetery merchandise and services bought ahead, such as a vault, the opening and closing, or a marker Seventy percent of the retail price goes into a merchandise trust at a Pennsylvania bank once you've paid in full, under a 1963 law on funeral and cemetery goods sold ahead of need; the seller may keep thirty percent if you stop paying before that; lots and graves are outside this law Whether the cemetery guarantees the price; where the trust is held

Which box you sign, revocable or irrevocable, decides whether you can change the plan.

You choose by signing one of two boxes on the Board-approved form: revocable means the plan can be ended and moved; irrevocable means it can't be undone.

In 2004 Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court, reading the Board-approved forms, held that an irrevocable agreement can't be undone after the three business days both versions allow for cancelling, and that the Funeral Director Law and the Board's rules say nothing about rescinding one; the one way out it pointed to is a move out of state. The revocable version could be ended by you or the funeral home before your death. So ask whether your form has the two boxes and the three-business-day cancellation.

A revocable contract that's ended moves the services and the money to another funeral director; cash back instead is a contract term.

What the contract decides that the law doesn't.

Nothing in the law requires a funeral home to guarantee the price; the contract decides that, who pays any difference, any cancellation beyond what the law gives and how much comes back, which bank holds the money, who pays the tax on the interest, what replaces goods no longer available, and the home's service area and transfer terms.

Several Berks homes fund a preplan through a preneed insurance policy, and then the policy's own terms govern what happens if you stop paying, die early or cancel; the escrow rule covers money a funeral director accepts for the contract itself, so ask whether your payment goes to the insurer or through the home; a question about the insurer goes to the Pennsylvania Insurance Department, 1-877-881-6388.

A vault, the opening and closing of the grave, or a marker bought ahead from a cemetery falls under the 1963 law in the table: seventy percent in trust, where a funeral director's own deposit is 100 percent.

Medical Assistance and the irrevocable burial reserve.

Medical Assistance is Pennsylvania's Medicaid, and it decides nursing home help partly by counting what you own. An irrevocable burial reserve, money set aside for the funeral that can't be withdrawn before death, isn't counted.

The County Assistance Office reads the agreement's own terms, which have to say the funds can't be withdrawn before death; if anyone can pull the money out earlier, the office treats it as revocable whatever the label, though the move-out-of-state clause state law requires doesn't make it revocable. An irrevocable pre-need contract in the director's escrow or trust account is that kind of reserve when the agreement says the funds can't be withdrawn before death. A life insurance policy set aside for burial qualifies too if it can't be cashed before death and is owned by a funeral director or held in a burial account.

The office also checks that you paid a fair price, which it calls fair consideration: an amount up to 25 percent above the average cost of burial in your county passes without question, and the Berks average is $26,285 as of 2026, so a reserve up to $32,856.25 is within that allowance; a larger one has to be documented as reasonable, such as carrying the body to a distant burial. The office's other conditions are that ownership of the reserve is transferred to the funeral home, not only the beneficiary, and that it was set up before the look-back period, before Medical Assistance was authorized, or within 30 days after.

Each reserve is for one person's funeral, and the county figures apply per person; what the office does with your reserve when your spouse applies is its call. Whatever's left after the funeral goes to your estate; see our guide to probate in Pennsylvania.

A revocable reserve, one you could still withdraw, is left out of the count only up to $1,500 per person, less any irrevocable reserve and part of any life insurance (its face value when that's $1,500 or less, or up to $1,000 of a bigger policy's cash value), so an irrevocable reserve of $1,500 or more uses it up. Any other question about your own case goes to the Berks County Assistance Office, 625 Cherry Street, Reading, 1-866-215-3912 or 610-736-4211, and our senior services guide has an elder law section.

What to ask a Berks funeral home before you put money down.

Start with the General Price List, which the home has to give you; our post on what a funeral costs in Berks County explains it. Then ask these before any money changes hands:

  • What am I paying for, merchandise, services or both?
  • What happens to the money and the interest, and in which bank?
  • Am I protected if the firm goes out of business?
  • Can I cancel and get a full refund if I change my mind?
  • What happens if I move or die away from home?
  • Which box am I signing, revocable or irrevocable, and what does the contract guarantee?

This is general information; a question about your own money or your own plan goes to the funeral director you're considering, or to a lawyer for the estate side. The county funeral homes page lists the Berks funeral homes with phone numbers, so pick two or three and ask for the price list and the pre-need contract.

Frequently asked questions.

Do I have to pay ahead to preplan?

No. You can decide everything in advance and pay nothing.

What happens to my plan if the funeral home sells or closes?

Its prepaid contracts and accounts transfer immediately to the licensee who takes them on, and the buyer notifies every purchaser in writing within 30 days of settlement. If the buyer refuses the contracts, or the home simply closes, the money is still in the escrow or trust account at the bank, registered to your contract; if nobody has assumed your contract, the complaint goes to the State Board of Funeral Directors, as an electronic Statement of Complaint on PALS or on a mailed form requested at 800-822-2113. With an insurance-funded plan the money is in the policy, not the home, so ask the home and the insurer who the beneficiary becomes.

Does my family have to follow the plan I wrote down?

Your surviving spouse has sole authority under Pennsylvania law, then your next of kin in the order they'd inherit, and a court can set that aside only on clear and convincing evidence of enduring estrangement, incompetence, a waiver and agreement, or contrary intent, your own spoken or written, unrevoked wish that someone else decide. The whole order is subject to a valid will, and for a service member to a later DD Form 93; a lawyer handles that side.

Can I move the plan if I leave Berks County?

Within Pennsylvania the contract decides where the plan can move, and the money stays in a Pennsylvania bank until it's paid out. A move out of state is the one case the law itself covers: after the plan is paid in full, while the person it's for is living and before the funeral is performed, you can cancel on written notice to the seller and the trustee, for a funeral director's contract the home and the bank holding the escrow, and take back the principal on deposit for your contract, with the interest going to the seller; a lawyer can confirm how that applies to your contract. One chain with Berks funeral homes prints that its plans transfer to its other locations; a transfer can carry a fee.

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