For Insurance Agents & Financial Advisors · Funeral Expense Trusts
Two cases. Two problems. One trust.
Pre-planning clients are looking for liquidity, crisis clients need protection. A Funeral Expense Trust solves both problems — and puts you at the center of the transaction instead of the funeral home.
Pre-Planning
Liquidity
Your client hasn’t prepaid, and traditional life insurance won’t pay the funeral home for weeks. A Funeral Expense Trust makes funds available within 24 to 48 hours, while the rest of the estate works through a formal claims process and, often, estate administration and potentially probate.
The family isn’t waiting on anyone.
Crisis
Protection
Your client is entering a nursing home and the countable assets have to go somewhere. An irrevocable funeral trust moves that money out of the countable column, protecting eligibility and keeping the funds designated for their actual purpose.
The money stays out of the spend-down.
Why wouldn’t a family want to do this at a funeral home?
Because it means sitting across from a funeral director, confronting their own mortality, and choosing cremation or burial — before they’re ready to think about any of it.
With a funeral trust, we’re not asking families to make decisions they’re not ready for. The money is set aside now, the decisions wait, and they can change when the time comes. High value, low commitment.
Wouldn’t they rather do that with someone they already know? Someone who knows their balance sheet, their family, and their goals. You can be that person.
For larger estates
If your client has more than a funeral to protect
Some clients have excess resources sitting in countable assets, and a funeral trust alone won’t move the needle. An estate trust lets you set aside roughly $100,000 outside the countable estate and beyond the reach of creditors — including a nursing home.
It works on a five-year look forward. Plan early, and if your client doesn’t need nursing home care within 60 months, that money is exempt. Plan late, and it isn’t.
For the client with a larger estate, the funeral trust is the first step. The estate trust is the second →
What most insurance agents and financial advisors are doing right now
| What they do | What went wrong |
|---|---|
| Referred the client to the funeral home | The client prepaid at the funeral home, or did nothing at all |
| Never brought up funeral planning | Most never knew they had a seat at the table |
| Sold final expense insurance | Oftentimes the premiums outweigh the benefit |
| Sold traditional life insurance | Weeks of processing, and the payout goes to the beneficiary, not the funeral home |
| Did nothing | The family scrambled at the worst possible moment |
The Funeral Expense Trust is the first option that solves the problem without creating a new one. We are not asking your client to shell out new money. We are only repositioning money they already have.
Planning is as simple as three steps
- Design the caseYou size the trust and position it with your client, case by case.
- Fund the trustSingle premium deposits, and the trust can be funded until age 99. No medical underwriting.
- The family has accessAt the time of a claim, funds are released within 24–48 hours of death, designated for funeral expenses.
Funeral trust and estate trust carriers
National Guardian Life Insurance Company
Unity Financial Life Insurance Company
Elder Life Group is one of the nation’s largest distributors of funeral expense trusts, with national distribution for both carriers. Formerly known as Delco Estate Planning Services, we have been distributing the funeral trust nationally for over 20 years.
What you get as an agent
- Compensation — among the highest single premium life insurance commissions in the industry. Ask for the rate sheet when we talk.
- Support — a team that answers the phone, and a team that has helped many agents become very successful in the industry, based on our 20 years of developing these products and their distribution
- Case design — whether you are looking to design one trust or complete a spend down on multiple family members, we can help you along the way
- Marketing and training — materials and campaigns you can put your name on, and training on product, positioning, and the Medicaid conversation
Start with the case in front of you
Tell us what your client is facing and we’ll show you how the trust fits.