Three-month-old Lorenzo Farmer didn't have it easy in his short life. He was born prematurely and had to undergo surgery for a hernia almost as soon as his family got him home. Still, it was a surprise when on June 15 he died at a Salt Lake City hospital of complications from what was supposed to be a routine surgery. While the family was reeling from that blow, they got another unwelcome surprise -- because of a new state law, they couldn't take Lorenzo home, back to the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho, until a licensed funeral director signed the death certificate.

'It was like a wall," recalled Wendy Rodriguez, Lorenzo's grandmother. "Everybody was telling us, 'No. No. No. We can't release the body to a family member. A funeral home has to be involved.' "

They may be the first people to encounter the new law, which sailed through the Legislature earlier this year. As of May 1, only a licensed funeral director can sign a death certificate to certify the disposition of a body. Previously, the law also allowed a "person acting as a funeral director," such as a family member, to sign.

Though lawmakers gave it little attention, funeral rights advocates are now lining up to criticize the bill. They say the change could make a death in the family more emotionally and financially difficult and that it reduces the choices people have when caring for loved ones who have died.

The Utah Funeral Directors Association, which pushed for the change, doesn't see it that way. The law helps ensure rules for dealing with the dead are followed, UFDA president Tod Bonzo said, and doesn't restrict anyone's funeral choices.

"They still have every right to do as much as they wish to do," he said.

Clear sailing

UFDA members pitched the bill to lawmakers as a technical change to reconcile state law and state regulations, protect consumers and make the collection of death certificates more reliable.

It didn't receive much scrutiny. Legislators placed it on what's known as the "consent calendar," a list of bills considered so uncontroversial that they aren't debated outside of the committee process.

"I can't think of anyone who would object," Shaun Myers of Myers Mortuary, in Ogden, told legislators. "I'm sure there are people who might, but I'm not aware of any at this point in time."

Bonzo said recently that the bill accomplishes several important goals.

"The primary goal was to protect the consumer more than anything," he said. "It is a protection for human health. Our goal was to help health and vital statistics by monitoring deaths in the state."

With home medical care -- and home deaths -- becoming more common, he said, "there's not a real way of policing" whether people are complying with state laws.

"Like anything else, there has to be accountability and there has to be policing," Bonzo said. "I guess that falls to us because of our business."

He said the new requirement guards against unfiled or improperly filed death certificates and ensures that people do everything they need to do when transporting, burying, cremating or making other final arrangements for a deceased person. It would be risky for a funeral director to sign a document without checking to make sure the rules are being followed.

Bonzo wasn't sure, however, to what extent people were violating rules for the dead beforehand.

"I couldn't tell you," he said. "I don't know if that was actually going on."

It does happen -- just not very often, said Jeff Duncan, director of the Utah Office of Vital Records.

"It was not a big problem," he said. "We probably got 10 a year where the family had signed it."

"They typically did have problems," he added, such as missing information or not filing in time. But it happened so rarely, he said, that it wasn't a much of an issue.

Still, he supports the new law because it makes filing more efficient. The office is also introducing electronic filing of death certificates and only licensed funeral directors will be able to log on to that system, although paper filing still will be available.

"I thought it was a good thing," Duncan said of the bill. "But we didn't push for it."

Is the new law neededfi

The UFDA's push for the legislation didn't surprise Lane Smith, a member of the organization and founder of Utah County-based Serenicare, which specializes in funeral services for hospice patients.

"What they're doing is something all funeral associations do in every state, and that's to be protective," he said. "It's not a consumer-friendly kind of circumstance."

It's also "goofy," he said, describing the new law as a solution "to a problem that doesn't exist."

"All that it did from a funeral director's perspective is, for the families that took care of that stuff themselves, it took that ability away," Smith said. "That was just astounding to me. There are very, very few families that take care of their own services."

Now that families have to seek out a funeral director whether they want to or not, there are concerns: That funeral homes could use the requirement as an avenue to sell services to people who otherwise would make independent funeral arrangements, for example, or that funeral directors will tack on fees for processing and transportation when the only service requested is a signed death certificate.

"Funeral people are very, very good at selling," Smith said. "When families have lost a loved one, they're extraordinarily vulnerable. They will make terrible decisions."

Josh Slocum, a spokesman for the Funeral Consumers Alliance, noted that the funeral business is changing. More people are choosing cremation, which is not as profitable for funeral homes, and in general are questioning the need to spend $5,000 to $10,000 on a funeral, he said.

"The solution to this is not to make it so families can't do it," he said. He compared it to requiring parents to take a child with a fever to a state-licensed facility instead of caring for the child at home; if that happened, "there'd be rioting in the street."

"People should find it morally outrageous that the state would presume to tell a family that they must involve a third-person private business, even if they don't want to patronize it," Slocum said.

"They are not the funeral police. It is not their role to oversee all the death activities a family would choose."

The price of a signature

The cost for someone seeking only a funeral director's signature could vary widely.

Susan Turpin of the Alternative Society of Utah, a funeral director who is fiercely critical of the new law, said she'll sign a death certificate for free if she doesn't have to travel far to do so. Smith said he'd charge a handling fee of $7.95.

Bonzo said his funeral home, Metcalf Mortuary in St. George, hasn't set a specific charge for just signing a death certificate.

"It varies from funeral home to funeral home," he said. "Some may do it for no cost. Others may have a processing fee, anywhere from 50 bucks on up."

He said he'd be surprised if any funeral home charged more than $100. When contacted, employees at funeral homes in Utah County said no such fee had been set, and in most cases the employees said they hadn't heard of the new law.

Some informal research on the subject has been conducted by Wendy Roberts, director of the Perinatal Bereavement Program at the University of Utah Hospital.

The hospital treats parents and newborns from across Utah as well as Idaho, Nevada, Montana and Wyoming -- so there are times, when a newborn dies, that a family has to make arrangements while away from home.

"It just adds one more step to the process," Roberts said of the new law.

She recently called several funeral homes in order to compile a list of homes that would sign a death certificate for free or for a reasonable charge.

"Most of the ones I have talked to have said they would sign and file it for no charge" if the family brings the certificate to them, she said. "If they have to come to the hospital, there will be a fee."

'We had a choice'

For Rodriguez's family, it was about a lot more than paying a fee when little Lorenzo died.

It was important, for instance, that the family and the baby's body not be separated until burial. But the funeral directors they found who said they could handle the family's needs also said the body would have to be picked up and held overnight because they were busy, Rodriguez said.

She and Lorenzo's parents, Adrian and Crystal Farmer, were also told that the baby might have to be embalmed -- a service that costs upwards of $400, and also something the family didn't want -- and that the funeral home, not the family, might have to transport the baby home.

"You just go with whatever they tell you," Rodriguez said. "We were just going to have to do it because we thought that was the only way we were going to get him back home.

"I don't know how much all that would've cost."

"It made it stressful -- a lot more stressful," said Adrian Farmer. "I think if you want to bring your family member back, then you should be able to without going through anyone."

They had help, though, from neighbors David and Marcia Racehorse-Robles. They own Bannock Pride, which makes handmade wood caskets and helps families plan independent funerals.

Through them, the family reached Turpin, who signed the death certificate for free. Lorenzo's body was packed in dry ice, and Farmer held his first child in his lap all the way home.

By the time they arrived a teepee was set up -- facing east, as tradition called for -- next to Rodriguez's house.

There was a fire built, burning cedar to help guide Lorenzo to the spirit world.

The family stayed up for the next three days, keeping the infant company, although they were separated for a brief time -- Lorenzo did need an undertaker's services to close his surgical scar.

On the third day, the day of burial, prayers and songs were offered as the sun came up. Robles had a small casket ready. Family members dug the grave by hand in one of the reservation's cemeteries, and Lorenzo was laid to rest next to his great-great-great-grandmother, along with all of his earthly possessions -- clothes, toys -- so that he would have them in the next life.

"They're his," said Crystal Farmer. "All we have are pictures."

Their traditions were honored despite the additional hurdles, said Rodriguez.

"I'm so glad we had a choice," she said. "We had to go through a lot to get to that point."

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.