Terms, privacy & accessibility

This manual is offered free, as general education. In plain language: use it at your own risk, we collect nothing about you, and we try to make it usable by everyone. The details follow. Last updated October 17, 2026.

1. Terms of use and disclaimer

By using this site you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use it.

Educational content only

Everything here is general information for people arranging a funeral, cremation, burial or memorial, or writing down their own wishes. It is not legal, medical, tax, financial or religious advice, and it is not a substitute for the judgment of a funeral director, an attorney, the agency that pays a benefit, or your faith community for your specific situation. Laws, providers and prices vary by state and place; where this manual gives a state's rule, it is an example.

Personalized content

The "Your arrangements" boxes, the dated tables, the seeded sheets and the benefit reference are generated automatically from what you type into the setup form. They point to what to check and whom to ask; they do not decide that a rule applies to you or that you qualify for anything. Check every figure and deadline with the provider or agency it comes from.

Safety

• If you are not sure a person has died or the death was sudden or unexpected, call 911. If the person was in hospice care at home and the death was expected, call the hospice's 24-hour number; hospice organizations advise not calling 911 in that case.
• After a sudden, violent or unexplained death, ask the 911 dispatcher or the police before moving the person or anything near them. The medical examiner or coroner may need to investigate, and state law decides which deaths they review.
• Prices. You can ask funeral providers for prices by phone, and you do not have to give your name first. Do not sign or pay until you have the General Price List and a written, itemized statement of what you chose.
• Embalming is not required by law except in special cases, and a funeral provider must have permission before embalming. Refrigeration is often an alternative.
• Caskets and containers. You do not have to buy a casket for cremation, and a funeral provider must accept a casket or urn you buy elsewhere without a fee. The Funeral Rule forbids claims that a casket or vault preserves a body.
• State rules vary. Who decides, waiting periods, refrigeration, home funerals, scattering ashes and which options are legal vary by state and locality. This manual gives examples. Confirm with your state's funeral board, vital records office, medical examiner or coroner, or an attorney.
• Identity. To protect the person's identity, leave their date and place of birth, middle and maiden names, mother's maiden name and home address out of the obituary. Notify Social Security (or confirm the funeral home did) and one credit bureau. Ask someone to stay at the home during the service.
• Debts and impostors. Family members usually do not have to pay a deceased person's debts from their own money. If a collector calls, ask for the debt in writing and check before you pay. Military funeral honors are free; anyone asking for payment for them is not from the military.
• Medicines and equipment. Take unused medicines to a take-back site or pharmacy. Flush only the medicines on the FDA's flush list. Ask hospice to collect the equipment it supplied.
• Flying with ashes. Use a container that can be X-rayed, such as wood or plastic; TSA officers will not open a container. Check your airline's rules for checked bags.
• Crisis. If you or someone with you is in crisis, call or text 988, any time.
• Scope. This manual does not give legal, medical, tax or financial advice, does not cover wills, probate or estates, and does not decide religious questions.

Third-party links and products

The site links to tutorials, suppliers, books and other resources we found useful. We do not control those sites, do not endorse or guarantee anything on them, receive no payment or commission from them, and are not responsible for their content, availability, accuracy or practices. Product and brand names mentioned belong to their respective owners and are used only to identify them.

No warranty; limitation of liability

The site and its content are provided "as is" and "as available," without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, completeness, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Field Assembly LLC, Reassembly and the people who made this site are not liable for any loss, injury or damage, direct or indirect, arising from your use of the site or reliance on its content. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, so some of this may not apply to you.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute arising from the site or these terms will be brought in the state or federal courts located in Massachusetts, and you consent to their jurisdiction.

Changes and availability

We may change, pause or remove the site or any part of it at any time without notice. We have no obligation to keep it available or up to date.

2. Privacy

Short version: we do not collect, store or sell any information about you.

• No accounts, no sign-up, no email. There is nothing to join.
• No analytics, no tracking, no advertising, no cookies. The site sets no cookies and includes no third-party scripts, pixels or embedded content. Fonts are served from this site, not from a font service.
• Your setup stays on your device. What you type into the setup form, and the progress checkboxes, are saved only in your browser's local storage so the site can show them back to you. They are never transmitted to us. Clearing your browser data, or using the "Clear my setup" button, deletes them.
• Share links contain your setup. The "copy a link" feature encodes your answers into the web address itself so you can open them on another device or send them to a helper. Anyone who has that link can see those answers. Do not put anything in the setup form that you would not want in a link you share.
• Hosting logs. The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which, like any web host, processes technical request data (such as your IP address, browser type and the pages requested) to deliver the site and protect it from abuse, under Cloudflare's privacy policy. We do not use that data to identify or track visitors.
• Links to other sites take you to services with their own privacy practices.
• Children. The site is not directed at children under 13 and we knowingly collect no information from anyone.

3. Accessibility

We want this manual to be usable by everyone, including people who use screen readers, keyboards, magnification or high contrast. The site is built to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA. Specifically:

• Semantic HTML with headings, landmarks, lists and tables with header rows; a "skip to content" link; visible keyboard focus on every control.
• Every form field has a label; checkboxes and radio buttons are labeled; the menu button reports its state.
• Text and interface colors meet contrast minimums in both light and dark modes; information is never conveyed by color alone.
• Text resizes with browser settings; layouts reflow to narrow screens; no content flashes or moves on its own.
• Diagrams have text descriptions; icons in the navigation are decorative and accompanied by text.

Known limitations: wide reference tables scroll horizontally on small screens, and printable pages depend on your browser's print settings. If anything on this site is hard for you to use, please tell us through fieldassembly.net and we will try to fix it.

4. Copyright and sharing

© 2026 Field Assembly LLC. The text, structure and code of this manual are copyrighted. You are welcome to use the manual for your own situation, share the link freely, print pages for personal use, and quote short passages with attribution. Please do not republish the manual or substantial parts of it, sell it, or present it as your own. Linked third-party material belongs to its respective owners. The self-hosted fonts (Cormorant Garamond and Inter) are used under the SIL Open Font License.

Built by Reassembly for Field Assembly LLC.