Article: Tax Sheltering Death Care

Victoria J. Haneman (Creighton Unversity School of Law)  recently published, Tax Sheltering Death Care, 2024. Provided below is an Introduction:

Death is not free. Death care expense is the third largest category of expense with which the average American will contend in a lifetime. Most Americans are unable to shoulder the often-exorbitant cost of death care without being forced to beg, borrow, or simply abandon human remains. In a society with an uneasy relationship with safety-net assistance for the poor and middle class, incentivized savings and precommitment devices arguably become an effective weapon in a limited arsenal to support poverty reduction and economic mobility—and a moral imperative to assist low- and middle-income families with bearing an expense that will be both sizeable and unavoidable, but one that absolutely no one wants to think about. This Article proposes a practical tax-based solution with the goal of catalyzing a radical shift: repurposing existing 529 savings infrastructure to nudge consumer behavior.