KIYC: Some NJ residents are losing money invested in prepaid funerals
The law requires funds to be placed in dedicated accounts. Kane In Your Corner finds that doesn't always happen, and if a home goes out of business, the money can be lost.
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A woman from Monmouth County says her elderly mother spent the last remnants of her savings on a prepaid funeral, only for the money to disappear.
She isn’t alone.
A Kane In Your Corner investigation reveals the practice is more common than one might think.
Caroline Hardwick says her mother, Marsha King, was always a devoted parent. In fact, when she needed to go into a nursing home, she gave Caroline her last $8,000 to purchase a pre-paid funeral.
“My mother's very fragile and very ill, and this was her savings,” Hardwick recalls.
Using her mother’s money, Hardwick bought a prepaid funeral at Donato-Askew Memorial Home in Red Bank. She thought the funds would be safe.
After all, New Jersey law requires funeral homes to place prepaid funds in dedicated accounts.
But that did not happen in Hardwick’s case.
When the funeral home shut down, she learned her mother’s savings were gone.
“I spoke with the (bank) manager,” Hardwick says. “She said, ‘Listen, there's only $70 in this account,' when it was supposed to be $8,000.“
Kane In Your Corner found other people across New Jersey who also lost money on prepaid funerals.
In fact, to get a sense of the extent of the problem, one need only look at what transpired in one building.
In 2025, Kane in Your Corner reported how customers lost money they invested in prepaid funerals at Childs Funeral Home in Red Bank.
RELATED: Eatontown family seeks help finding missing prepaid funeral funds
When that funeral home shut down, Donato-Askew set up shop in the same location. Now Donato-Askew also stands accused of mishandling prepaid funds.
The New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, which licenses funeral homes, says it takes Hardwick’s allegations seriously and promises to investigate and address them.
But some advocates say enough is enough.
“The problem is that the consumer has no real assurances that the money is going to be where the company said it was,” says Beverly Brown Ruggia, of New Jersey Citizen Action. In the absence of better state scrutiny of the funeral industry, Brown Ruggia advises consumers to avoid prepaid funeral arrangements and simply set money aside in a savings account.
As for Caroline Hardwick, she has now filed a lawsuit against the defunct funeral home and the people who sold her mother the prepaid plan, hoping she can recover the lost money before she needs to use it.
“It’s awful, the anxiety that comes over me, because you know. I don't have it to bury her,” she says.
