FEMA offers cash to cover COVID-19 funeral costs

When Wanda Olson’s son-in-law died in March after contracting COVID-19, she and her daughter had to contend with their grief and come up with the money for cremation.

Even without a funeral, the bill came to nearly $2,000, which Olson initially covered. But then she and her daughter learned of a federal program that reimburses families up to $9,000 for funeral costs for loved ones who died of COVID-19.

Olson’s daughter submitted an application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, received a deposit by June and was able to reimburse her mother the $1,974.

“Had this not been available, we would have been paying the money ourselves,” said Olson, 80, of Villa Rica, Georgia. “There wasn’t any red tape. This was a very easy, well-handled process.”

Beyond offering the financial lifeline, FEMA has urged grief-stricken relatives to be on alert for fraudsters looking to steal personal data by offering to register potential applications for funeral assistance. “FEMA has not sent any such notifications and we do not contact people before they register for assistance,” the agency noted in a fraud alert.

As of December 6, about 226,000 people had shared in the nearly $1.5 billion that FEMA has spent on funeral costs that occurred after January 20, 2020, the date of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. With the nation’s coronavirus death toll surpassing 816,000 in mid-December, it’s clear that many families who are eligible for reimbursement have yet to take advantage of the funeral benefit.

If you need to apply for our Funeral Assistance program due to COVID-19, you can call our hotline from 9 A.M. – 9 P.M. Eastern Time, Monday-Friday, at: 844-684-6333 | TTY: 800-462-7585.

Multilingual services are available.

More information: https://t.co/pIFqSEpRAe pic.twitter.com/cYZoatVeZd

— FEMA (@fema) June 24, 2021

Olson’s son-in-law was traveling a lot, working on air-conditioning systems in theaters, restaurants and businesses, when he began feeling ill, she said. After a few days at home, he went to the hospital and was put on a ventilator. He died several weeks later.

“He could never overcome it,” she said.

To be eligible for reimbursement, death certificates for those who died after May 16, 2020, must indicate that the death was attributed to COVID-19.

For deaths that occurred in the early months of the pandemic — from January 20 to May 16, 2020 — death certificates must be accompanied by a signed statement from a medical examiner, coroner or the certifying official listed on the certificate indicating that COVID-19 was the cause or a contributing cause of death.

The percentage of individuals who have been reimbursed varies dramatically from state to state — from nearly 40% in North Carolina and Maryland to fewer than 15% in Idaho and Oregon, according to state-by-state data compiled by FEMA.

While the reimbursement must go directly to individuals, some funeral directors have taken on the task of informing grieving families of the benefit.

After the benefit was first announced, David Shipper, owner of Sunset Funeral Home, Cremation Center & Cemetery in Evansville, Indiana, took out ads to let people know that help was available if they qualified.

“Nine thousand dollars — that’s a lot of money. We wanted to find a way to tell people about it,” Shipper said. “We stopped advertising some time ago, but when we have a new family with a death from COVID, we tell them about the program.”

Workers at the funeral home will sit down with families, gather the needed paperwork, contact FEMA on the phone and help walk them through the process if they ask, he said.

Many families may simply be unaware of the benefit, but others may opt against seeking the cash out of reluctance to revisit the pain of the death, Shipper said. He said the better time to seek help is when planning the funeral.

“They’re much more likely to take advantage right then than if they’ve already spent the money and don’t want to open it up again,” Shipper said.

The largest states account for some of the biggest shares of the FEMA reimbursement money.

The program has paid out more than 21,000 reimbursements in California and Texas, which have both reported more than 74,000 COVID-19 deaths. Residents applied for more than $141 million in each state.

The fewest number of reimbursements have occurred in Vermont, where 123 people were awarded a total of about $704,000.

Expenses covered under the FEMA program include funeral services, cremation and interment, as well as the costs for caskets or urns, burial plots or cremation niches, markers or headstones, transportation or transfer of remains, clergy or officiant services, and the use of funeral home equipment or staff.

The program has been paid for with federal stimulus funds, and money remains available. No online applications are allowed.

After all required documents are received and verified, it typically takes fewer than 30 days to determine if an individual is eligible, according to FEMA. Once eligibility is confirmed, applicants who request direct deposit may receive the money in a matter of days. It may take longer for applicants who request a check.

The reimbursement is one way of helping ease the emotional and financial burden that the pandemic has wreaked on communities across the country according to Ellen Wynn McBrayer, president of Jones-Wynn Funeral Homes & Crematory in Villa Rica, Georgia.

She recalled one woman who lost her mother, husband and one of her children to the disease in the span of six months. One of the workers at the funeral home also succumbed to the virus.

“To have to help a grieving family is hard on a normal day, but to see so many deaths — COVID has just broken a lot of hearts and taken a lot of lives,” she said.

For more information about the program, visit COVID-19 Funeral Assistance | FEMA.gov.

The economic rescue package passed by Congress last December included $2 billion for FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund to offer assistance to “an individual or household to meet disaster-related funeral expenses” incurred through December 31, 2020. The government should cover 100% of the funeral costs, according to the measure.

Still, FEMA was initially prevented from offering the help. In an April 28, 2019 memorandum, then-President Donald Trump authorized crisis counseling assistance through FEMA, but stipulated that the order “not be construed to encompass any authority to approve other forms of assistance.”