Purchases Made Before a Person’s DeathKnowing About the Existence of the Register of Prearranged Funeral Services Contracts and Prepurchased Sepulture Contracts

The register of prearranged funeral services contracts and prepurchased sepulture contracts was implemented on January 18, 2021 in order to make it easier to locate “prearranged” contracts a person may have entered into before death.

Checking the register before purchase

If you are shopping for prearranged funeral services, either for yourself or a loved one, the vendor is required to consult the register before entering into a contract with you. 

This consultation is carried out to check whether you or a loved one has already entered into a contract in the past for the person to whom funeral products and services are intended. This will avoid you having to spend money on agreements that already exist.

Proof of consultation

The vendor is required to give you proof of consultation of the register. This proof can be provided in 3 different forms, based on the search results:

• One or more contracts appear to have been entered into for the person who is the subject of the search (78.1 KB).
• No contracts appear to be directly related to the person who is the subject of the search (72.3 KB).
• No contracts related to the person who is the subject of the search were found (72.2 KB).

The vendor can only give you the proof of consultation in French. However, to help you fully understand its contents, an English version is available here.

Contracts found in the register

The consultation in the register, through the vendor, will make it possible to find the following contracts, if they exist:

• Prearranged funeral services contracts, which among other things include the embalmment, the viewing (wake), decorations, transportation, the coffin or urn, the funerary monument, the ceremony, the funeral service (funeral), the cremation and the interment.
• Prepurchased sepulture contracts, which include the purchase, leasing, reservation and/or maintenance of a compartment or any other space in a cemetery (concession, lot, etc.), a columbarium (niche), a mausoleum or other space used for such purposes.

Gradual implementation

The vendor has 45 days to enter the contracts mentioned above in the register. This applies to contracts entered into on January 18, 2021 or later.

Contracts entered into before that date that have not yet been honoured (or only partly honoured) will have to be entered in the register by the end of 2023.

It is therefore possible that, in the meantime, the search in the register yields no results or only partial results. In such a case, you can continue your search by contacting funeral service establishments before entering into an agreement.