Florida bans exclusive funeral-service deals with hospice and end-of-life providers

CS/CS/SB 598, “Funeral, Cemetery, and Consumer Services,” passed the Florida Senate 37-0 and the House 104-0 in the 2026 session and takes effect July 1, 2026, according to the Senate’s bill summary. Senator Truenow sponsored the bill, which moved through the Appropriations Committee on Agriculture, Environment, and General Government and the Banking and Insurance Committee.

The bill’s central consumer-protection provision stops a funeral, cemetery or cremation licensee from becoming what the Senate summary calls the “exclusive or sole provider” of those services for any business offering medical, palliative or end-of-life care to the public — closing off deals that locked a hospice or care facility into one funeral provider. It also lets a funeral home dispose of remains nobody has claimed after 90 days in lawful possession, if the person authorized to direct disposition never acts, and it lets cemetery acreage rules be satisfied by parcels split only by a public road, provided they sit close together.

On licensing, the bill streamlines entry for out-of-state funeral practitioners with five or more years of experience and drops the college-level law-course requirement for funeral director applicants. It also exempts prepaid funeral contracts from insurance-code insurable-interest rules and lets preneed licensees notify beneficiaries by email about unfulfilled service-fund distributions.