General information, not legal or financial advice. Each rule below is marked with its state. The sources are Western Australia’s Prepaid Funerals Code of Practice, Consumer Affairs Victoria, the NSW Government and the ACCC. A lawyer can say how a particular contract applies.
WA · cl. 6
Six places a cost can sit outside the price
Five of these are lines a Western Australian contract must carry. The sixth is what the contract leaves unsaid, which the NSW Government and the ACCC each speak to.
Transport, and its limits
The contract must say how the remains and the people attending will be transported, with details of the number and classes of vehicles, the most people the vehicles can carry, the furthest distance they will travel, and any limits on when the vehicles will be used. A funeral further away, a larger group or a different day can each meet one of those limits.
Documents, and whether their cost may change
It must list the documents to be prepared for the funeral, including the one to be given to the Registrar under section 42 of the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1998, with their cost or likely cost and whether those costs are likely to change.
Time
Every other service in the contract comes with an agreed period of time within which it will be provided. The code’s own example of an additional cost is a fee for a service provided beyond an agreed period of time.
Fees on top
The contract must set out the fees or charges that will or may be charged under it, including any administration or cancellation fee and any additional costs for providing its services.
The cemetery
Where the organiser will organise a cemetery contract, the prepaid contract must say who the parties to it will be, describe the services it covers, and state whether their costs have been, or will be, fully paid. A cemetery contract, in the code, is one with a cemetery manager that relates to providing funeral services to the recipient under the prepaid contract.
What it never mentions
In New South Wales, the information given before a pre-paid or contributory contract should also detail the services the contract does not cover. In any state, the ACCC gives presenting optional costs as mandatory as one example of how a business may break the law by misleading consumers about prices.
Example
Worked example, Western Australia, with made-up figures
This example is invented to show how the lines above are read together. No real contract, provider or price is described.
A contract sets out a viewing with an agreed period of one hour, and, as an additional cost under clause 6(k), $120 for each further half hour. Its transport line allows travel of up to 30 kilometres, with $4 for each kilometre beyond that, also listed as an additional cost. When the funeral is needed, the family holds a two-hour viewing, and the funeral is held 45 kilometres away.
| Line | Agreed in the contract | On the day | Additional cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Viewing time | 1 hour, then $120 a half hour | 2 hours: 2 extra half hours | 2 × $120 = $240 |
| Distance | 30 km, then $4 a km | 45 km: 15 km over | 15 × $4 = $60 |
| Total additional | Set out in advance | Both limits passed | $300 |
Both amounts came from lines the contract had to carry, so the $300 can be checked against the paper. A charge for something the contract set out at a fixed amount, with no additional cost attached, is a different matter: the code holds that amount unless the agreement described in When the funeral is needed is given.
Vic
Fees that belong to someone else
Victoria’s price-list rules apply equally to all funeral providers operating there, with no exemptions, and they show how a fee charged by someone other than the provider is meant to appear.
A Victorian price list must include a reasonable estimate of certain disbursements, among them any fee a third party charges for the burial or cremation. Consumer Affairs Victoria also defines a package as any combination of goods and services a provider offers, including any supplied by a third party, and requires the list to describe what each package contains and give its total cost. So a package can carry another business’s fee within its total, and its description is the place that shows it.
WA · cl. 2
What the code counts as a funeral service
The Western Australian definition is wide. A funeral service is any good or service supplied in connection with a funeral, and the code lists organising death and funeral notices, mortuary services, a coffin, casket or urn, flowers, providing or erecting a memorial, transport for the remains and the mourners, granting a right of burial, the service itself, and carrying out an interment or a cremation. Read against that list, a contract that is silent on one of them, such as a memorial or the right of burial, has not set it out as an agreed service, which the code defines as a funeral service to be provided under the prepaid contract.