Sue Adelson started planning for her husband's death in 2019, the year he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. She visited Drozdal Funeral Home in Northampton, Massachusetts. The costs were, in her word, "really expensive." She and her husband spent five years saving into what she called a "death account."
Adelson was able to use an independent, family-owned funeral home for her husband's burial. Finding one is becoming harder.
In western Massachusetts, an investigation by The Shoestring found that three consolidation firms now own 25% of the 81 funeral homes in the region's four counties. An analysis of pricing data from the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts found that all three companies charged higher average prices than independent competitors across six categories: basic service fee, immediate burial, direct cremation, embalming, least cost casket, and least cost burial vault.
The consolidation is being driven by demographics and succession problems. A National Funeral Directors Association survey found that 46% of funeral directors plan to retire within five years. When no family member takes over the business, selling to a corporate chain becomes the only realistic exit.
By the Numbers
The SCI playbook
The pattern was set by Service Corporation International, the largest deathcare company in the United States and Canada. Victoria Haneman, a fiduciary law professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, described how SCI built its dominance through mass acquisition of family-owned businesses. SCI keeps the original names of the funeral homes it buys.
"The stated business plan, in effect, exploits the consumer's belief that they are doing business with a local company," Haneman wrote in a 2020 paper titled "Funeral Poverty." "Consumer advocates and funeral industry experts state that SCI funeral homes are among the most expensive."
A Consumer Federation of America study found that median prices at SCI funeral homes were 47 to 72% higher than at independent competitors.
SCI owned more than 3,800 funeral homes by 2000. After its 2013 acquisition of Stewart Enterprises, the Federal Trade Commission imposed a 10-year review period restricting SCI's ability to expand through acquisitions. That restriction has since expired.
The next generation of consolidators
In western Massachusetts, a newer player has emerged. Milestone Funeral Services was founded in 2021 by Michael Martel and Timothy Smart, two former SCI employees. They targeted the suburban and rural funeral home market.
"We knew it was a place that we were very comfortable working in," Martel told The Shoestring. "We deliberately sought to build an organization that focused on that."
In three years, Milestone acquired 77 funeral homes across the Northeast. In Hampden County, Massachusetts, the company owns approximately 20% of all funeral homes. In 2024, Milestone itself was acquired by Rosewood Private Investments, the private equity arm of the Rosewood Corporation, which is owned by the trust of the late hotelier and heiress Caroline Hunt.
Two other chains operate in the region alongside Milestone. Foundation Partners Group, which was acquired in August by an undisclosed group of investors, owns a 49% stake in the Beers and Story chain of funeral homes. Carriage Services, a publicly traded company, also owns locations. The Shoestring could not identify articles of organization for Carriage Funeral Services, and the state licensing board could not find records related to its application.
The price data
The Shoestring's analysis was possible because Massachusetts requires funeral homes to disclose all entities with an ownership stake. Most states do not have this requirement.
"Massachusetts is very progressive in some of the laws that they pass," Haneman said. "Most states do not have these disclosure statutes."
Using price lists collected bi-annually by the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts, The Shoestring tracked pricing across 81 funeral homes for 2020, 2022, and 2024. Across all six price categories, the average price charged by publicly traded or private equity-backed companies was higher than the average charged by independent funeral homes.
The Institute for Local Self Reliance submitted comments to the FTC and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division arguing that because funeral home services are primarily labor-intensive, there are few efficiency gains from scaling. Larger companies increase profits by raising prices instead of cutting costs.
What consolidation looks like on the ground
Dina Stander has been an end-of-life navigator for 20 years in western Massachusetts. She founded the Northeast Death Care Collaborative. She said she always prefers to send families to local, independent funeral homes.
"They're much more pleasant to deal with," Stander said. "The big corporate SCI, whoever it is, buys up the funeral home and keeps the family in place, at least for a while. But it feels different."
Stander called consolidation "always bad for the community," citing higher prices and less personal relationships with funeral directors. That matters when families are grieving and making quick decisions about expensive services.
Kennedy Smith, a researcher at the Institute for Local Self Reliance, said funeral homes rely on personal reputation and multi-generational relationships. "One of the interesting side effects of consolidation is that piece of it is beginning to fall away," Smith said. "You can't quantify that in economic terms, but it definitely has an impact on the sense of community."
Chris Powers took over as funeral director at Ahearn Funeral Home in Northampton after Milestone acquired it. He has been a licensed funeral director in Massachusetts for 39 years.
"In Hampshire county, there are eight funeral homes, and none have any children going into the business," Powers said. "In the next ten years or so, everything in this area is going to change dramatically."
Massachusetts weighs deregulation
Governor Maura Healey sent a letter in May to the state's Board of Registration in Embalming and Funeral Directing, instructing the board to review regulations "with the goal of eliminating outdated requirements to reduce business cost, repeal unnecessary barriers and onerous requirements, and rescind regulations that stifle competition."
The board's chair, Paul Phaneuf, said the regulations under review are primarily related to a labor shortage of workers trained in the mortuary sciences. Massachusetts does not currently accept funeral director licenses from other states, requiring transplants to repeat training and apprenticeship requirements that take at least two years.
Lobbying spending by deathcare interests in Massachusetts has surged alongside consolidation. In 2021, the Massachusetts Funeral Directors Association doubled its lobbying budget. By 2024, total lobbying spending by deathcare interests matched the combined total from 2015 to 2021. Earth Funeral, a company that operates natural organic reduction facilities, spent $23,000 on lobbying this year to push for legalization of human composting in the state.
The transparency problem
The Shoestring investigation was possible because of a quirk in Massachusetts law. The state requires funeral homes to disclose all entities with an ownership stake. No other state that The Shoestring identified has this requirement at the same level of detail.
In most of the country, a family walking into a funeral home with its original family name on the door has no way of knowing whether it is still independently owned. SCI, Milestone, Foundation Partners, and other chains retain the original names of the businesses they acquire. The price lists, staff, and building all look the same. The ownership structure and pricing incentives have changed entirely.
The FTC's Funeral Rule requires funeral homes to provide itemized pricing upon request. It does not require disclosure of ownership.
Sources
- The Shoestring, Jonathan Gerhardson, "There's a Lot of Money in Death: Funeral Home Consolidation Hits Western Mass," July 2026
- Victoria Haneman, "Funeral Poverty," University of Georgia School of Law, 2020
- Consumer Federation of America, funeral pricing study (cited in Haneman 2020)
- National Funeral Directors Association, workforce survey on retirement plans
- Institute for Local Self Reliance, comments to FTC and DOJ Antitrust Division on serial acquisitions and roll-ups
- Funeral Consumers Alliance of Western Massachusetts, bi-annual price list data (2020, 2022, 2024)
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