Florida Statutes 497.002 – Purpose and intent
Current as of: 2023 | Check for updates
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Terms Used In Florida Statutes 497.002
- Cemetery: means a place dedicated to and used or intended to be used for the permanent interment of human remains or cremated remains. See Florida Statutes 497.005
- Contract: A legal written agreement that becomes binding when signed.
- Control: means the possession, directly or indirectly, through the ownership of voting shares, by contract, arrangement, understanding, relationship, or otherwise, of the power to direct or cause the direction of the management and policies of a person or entity. See Florida Statutes 497.005
- Cremation: means any mechanical or thermal process whereby a dead human body is reduced to ashes and bone fragments. See Florida Statutes 497.005
- Grantor: The person who establishes a trust and places property into it.
- Income: means earnings on trust assets, including interest, dividends, and other income earned on the principal. See Florida Statutes 497.005
- merchandise: means any personal property offered or sold by any person for use in connection with the final disposition, memorialization, interment, entombment, or inurnment of human remains or cremated remains, including, but not limited to, caskets, outer burial containers, alternative containers, cremation containers, cremation interment containers, urns, monuments, private mausoleums, flowers, benches, vases, acknowledgment cards, register books, memory folders, prayer cards, and clothing. See Florida Statutes 497.005
- Monument: means any product used for identifying a grave site and cemetery memorials of all types, including monuments, markers, and vases. See Florida Statutes 497.005
- Preneed: means any arrangement or method, of which the provider of funeral merchandise or services has actual knowledge, whereby any person agrees to furnish funeral merchandise or service in the future. See Florida Statutes 497.005
- Purchaser: means a person who executes a preneed or an at-need contract with a licensee for merchandise or services. See Florida Statutes 497.005
- Rules: refers to rules adopted under this chapter unless expressly indicated to the contrary. See Florida Statutes 497.005
(1) The Legislature recognizes that purchasers of preneed burial rights, funeral or burial merchandise, or funeral or burial services may suffer serious economic harm if purchase money is not set aside for future use as intended by the purchaser and that the failure to maintain cemetery grounds properly may cause significant emotional stress. Therefore, it is necessary in the interest of the public welfare to regulate preneed sales and cemeteries in this state. However, restrictions shall be imposed only to the extent necessary to protect the public from significant or discernible harm or damage and not in a manner which will unreasonably affect the competitive market.
(2) Subject to certain interests of society, the Legislature finds that every competent adult has the right to control the decisions relating to her or his own funeral arrangements. Accordingly, unless otherwise stated herein, it is the Legislature’s express intent that nothing contained in this chapter should be construed or interpreted in any manner as to subject preneed contract purchasers to federal income taxation under the grantor trust rules contained in ss. 671 et seq. of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended.
(3) The Legislature deems it necessary in the interest of public health and safety to establish minimum qualifications for entry into the professions and occupations of embalming, funeral directing, cremation, direct disposition, and monument sales; to regulate such activities; and to provide for swift and effective discipline for those practitioners who violate the law.