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Team BFSometime before September 30, California’s Governor has to sign or veto Senate Bill 1149, a short bill that would let an employee take bereavement leave for someone who was never on the list. It was enrolled and presented to the Governor on August 24, and if you run benefits for a company with anyone in California, it reopens a question most policies treat as long settled: who counts as family.
On October 14, NFP, the benefits consultancy owned by Aon, published its 2027 U.S. Leave Management Report, built on a survey of more than a thousand American employers. One number in it should stop every benefits leader mid-scroll: only 26 percent say they are very confident they can administer leave accurately and in line with compliance standards.
On October 5, Gray Media stations across the country carried a story out of Lexington, Kentucky, about a father who went looking for his son’s obituary and found several he had never seen before. Noah Tinch died one day before his nineteenth birthday, and while his family was still finalizing funeral arrangements, anonymous obituaries for him were already circulating online, one listing his age as 32 and another getting his middle name wrong.
On October 1, a change to Medicare’s hospice rules takes effect that puts a new piece of paper into the hands of nearly every family entering hospice care. CMS finalized it in the FY 2027 Hospice Wage Index and Payment Rate Update, published in the Federal Register on August 3, and the short version is this: the hospice election statement addendum, the document that spells out what hospice will not cover, is no longer something a family has to know to ask for.
On October 19, Park Lawn Corporation announced it had acquired Honquest Family Funeral Homes, two chapels in Loves Park and Roscoe, Illinois, that Tim Honquest spent three decades building. Terms were not disclosed, and the Rock River Current reported the deal the following day.
On September 30, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2542, a California bill that changes who is allowed to decide what happens to a person’s body after they die. If you have never thought about that question, the state has already answered it for you, and the answer is a numbered list in the Health and Safety Code that most families only discover during the one week they can least afford a surprise.
Team BFWhat Every Family Should Understand
The AI-powered platform revolutionizing end-of-life planning just launched its $1M pre-seed round and is rapidly scaling to serve 100,000 families in its second year.
Team BFMost advisory relationships are built on trust. But when a client passes, the trust built over decades can quietly walk out the door along with the assets. Research shows that 70 to 80 percent of AUM leaves advisory firms within 18 months of a client's death. The plan was written. Nobody made sure it worked.