Pre-Planning A Veteran's Funeral

If you or your spouse is a veteran, there are a number of death and funeral benefits available. Knowing all of your options and pre-planning the funeral may be the best way to ensure you are able to take full advantage of those benefits.

Read further in order to understand what options are out there for you or your spouse:

Funeral and Burial Benefits for Veterans

Depending on how the veteran passed away, there are benefits available for funeral expenses and burial expenses. To start, all veterans can be buried in a national cemetery, as can spouses and minor children off a veteran. If the veteran died during active duty, they would receive full benefits for their funeral and burial. If a veteran passes away off-duty, the benefits would depend on the circumstances of the veteran's death.

Also, certain unmarried adult children may also have benefits allotted to them for free burial in a national cemetery, but there are certain conditions applied to those benefits. Your local Veterans Affairs office will be able to provide you and your family with more specific details regarding funeral and burial benefits.

It will be extremely helpful to have a few contact people that you can turn to. Taking the time to visit your local VA office now means you will be prepared when it comes time to file for death and burial benefits and knowing whether or not you'll receive money towards the burial. 

Pre-Planning a Veteran's Funeral

It is important to understand that while a veteran is eligible to be buried for free in a national cemetery, you can not reserve a plot, all arrangements are made at the time of their death. So it is not a bad idea to have a burial place already in mind, in the even that there is no room in a local national cemetery.

Also, there is no guarantee that spouses can be buried next to each other. So if it's important for you and your spouse to buried together, you may want to consider other options.

Working with a funeral home that specializes in veteran's funerals is helpful, because they will have information on military funerals and other pertinent details. You can establish an account and make payments in order to prepay for funeral services, and many funeral homes will lock you in at today's current rate. Ask your local funeral home director how you can get started. If you have other questions, contact a company like Hartsell Funeral Home with any question or concerns you might have.