Every week another email lands in my inbox from a vendor warning owners that the FTC''s pending amendment to the Funeral Rule is going to require a full GPL rewrite, online pricing posting, and a tablet in every arrangement room. Half of that is true. Half of it isn''t. The ones selling the panic are usually the ones with a $4,000 compliance package to sell you.
Here''s what the ANPR (Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) actually does — based on the docket, the comment record, and the FTC''s own staff reports — and what it doesn''t.
What''s actually on the table
The FTC opened the ANPR in 2022 with three concrete questions:
- Should funeral homes be required to post the GPL online? This is the one getting the most ink. The Commission has not adopted it. They asked the question. The comment record is split: consumer groups want it, NFDA pushed back hard on small-home cost. As of this writing, no rule requiring online posting has been issued.
- Should the disclosure obligations extend to "at-need-adjacent" services — cremation societies, online aggregators, pre-need plans sold through third parties? This is where the most likely regulatory action sits. The current Rule pre-dates Service Corporation International by half a decade.
- Should the casket disclosure language be modernized? Specifically, the requirement that funeral homes provide a casket price list separate from the GPL. Several comments asked for consolidation. No final rule.
Notice what''s not on the table: there''s no proposal to require electronic delivery, no proposal to require a tablet in the arrangement room, no proposal to standardize line-item categories across all 50 states. That''s vendor talk.
What''s likely
Reading the docket conservatively, here''s my read on what''s likely in the next 18–24 months:
- Some form of online posting requirement — probably tiered by home size, probably with a phase-in. The FTC has signaled this is where consumer harm is most clear (price shopping for cremation).
- Tightened "Itemization Statement" language at the close of the arrangement. The current Statement of Funeral Goods and Services Selected is the FTC''s primary enforcement hook. Expect it to get tighter.
- Modest expansion of who counts as a "funeral provider." Cremation societies that route through a licensed home are likely the first target.
What''s unlikely
- A full federal mandate to revise every GPL by a specific date. The Funeral Rule has never worked that way; it sets disclosure floors and lets state law fill in.
- A required digital arrangement form. (The FTC has been clear that paper is still compliant.)
- A separate ANPR-mandated "price for cremation" line that supersedes existing OBC structures. The Commission is unlikely to override state pricing rules that detailed.
What to put in your GPL now
You don''t need to rewrite your GPL for an amendment that hasn''t passed. You do need to position it so the rewrite is easy if it does. Two things help:
- Make sure your GPL is already a clean PDF. When the online-posting requirement lands, the homes with a Word doc and a fax-quality scan will scramble. The homes with a print-ready, accessible PDF will upload it the same day and move on.
- Tighten your itemization language now. Specifically, the "Cash Advance Items" section and the "Direct Cremation" and "Direct Burial" descriptions. Those are the three areas the FTC staff comments have flagged most often in inspection reports. If yours read like 2008, you''re due for a refresh regardless of whether the ANPR moves.
The Deep Audit checks all three of these against current Rule language and against the comment record on the ANPR. It tells you specifically: here are the three lines most likely to need a revision if the amendment lands, here''s the language change to make now, and here''s the language to wait on.
Don''t buy the panic
If a vendor tells you the ANPR is going to force a $4,000 compliance overhaul next quarter, ask them to point to the rulemaking docket entry. There isn''t one. There''s an open ANPR with a comment record. That''s not the same thing as a final rule, and a careful read of the docket suggests the final rule, when it lands, will be narrower than the marketing emails are predicting.
Update your GPL on a normal cadence. Tighten the language the Rule already covers. Put it in a format you can upload if the requirement lands. That''s the whole playbook.
— Nathan