6. "You might not need me at all."

Only a few states require you to hire a funeral director at all. In most places, it's perfectly legal to plan and conduct a funeral in your home. While there are no hard statistics on home funerals, "public interest is definitely growing," says Lisa Carlson, author of "Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of Love." Experts say the option can make the grieving process more natural. "It allows [people] to feel all their emotions rather than showing up at a building and having to leave an hour later because there's another funeral," says Jerri Lyons, founder of Final Passages, a group that educates consumers about alternative funerals.

That doesn't mean it's easy. When Elizabeth Knox held a home funeral for her daughter nine years ago in Silver Spring, Md., she says the hospital where her daughter died refused to release the body to the family; she then had to call four crematories before finding one that would let the family act as funeral director. Last summer, when she conducted a home funeral for her mother in New Jersey, Knox was erroneously told by state officials that she couldn't transport her mother's body herself. Knox's frustrations prompted her to form a nonprofit group to guide others through the process.

7. "Prepaying benefits me, not you..."

So-called preneed funeral arrangements seem like a good idea on paper: Customers pick out the elements of their own ideal funeral and sometimes pay for it in advance, thus protecting their relatives against escalating prices. The costs are generally either paid up front in part or in full with a percentage put into a trust, or covered by taking out a preneed insurance policy and making monthly payments.

Either way, prepaying is a better deal for the funeral home. Under the upfront option, the funeral home pockets as much as 50 percent of the payment immediately, so if it goes out of business or you change your mind, you won't necessarily get all your money back — and less money earns interest in the trust. Preneed insurance policies, meanwhile, aren't usually refundable, and you may only get pennies on the dollar if you cash out of them. Even worse, if you live long enough, the monthly premiums can end up costing more than the funeral you wanted in the first place.

That's what almost happened to Patricia Cairns, a retiree in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Cairns selected a funeral plan valued at $5,842 and bought an irrevocable insurance policy with monthly premiums of $86.43. "What they never told me was that I had to pay on this until I was 80," she says. By that time, she calculates, she would have paid $10,371.60 for a funeral that was purchased for $5,842.

How to avoid falling into a similar trap? Mark Musgrove, immediate past president of the National Funeral Directors Association, says, "It's always smart to find an adviser to review the information before you...make a decision that may cost thousands of dollars." You can also read the association's "Consumer Preneed Bill of Rights".

8. "...and it doesn't cover everything."

Even if you do prepay, chances are your loved ones will still have to open their wallets, as there are many items commonly found on funeral bills — such as autopsy charges, flowers, and grave opening and closing fees — that can't be included in preneed contracts.

Relatives may also get stuck shelling out for the casket, since a model picked out 15 years ago may no longer be available. It's not uncommon for a model to be discontinued, and while there may be a similar replacement, prices will probably have increased.

Even worse, a funeral director may claim the desired casket is out of stock — a convenient opportunity for an upgrade. "It's definitely a huge red flag if [you're] asked to buy a more expensive casket" when a preselected model is simply out of stock, says Darrell Simpson, vice president of Wilkirson-Hatch-Bailey, an independent funeral home in Waco, Tex. — especially when most of the larger casket-manufacturing centers are willing to deliver a casket either the same day or by the morning of the next day.

9. "At the crematorium, anything goes."
In 2002 the funeral industry and the general public were appalled by news of decomposing remains found at a crematory in Noble, Ga. The cremation association quickly responded by revising a model state cremation law to include certification and training requirements. But in most states crematories are still not required to have inspections or certification.

A class-action lawsuit against the Georgia crematory also asserted claims against several funeral homes for failing to ensure that cremations were performed properly (or, in fact, at all). The funeral homes settled for roughly $36 million, and the crematory later settled for $80 million.

To help protect your loved one, the AARP recommends using a crematory that does undergo public inspections and to inquire about the training of the facility operators.

10. "'Green' burials have me feeling blue."
In addition to home funerals, another movement in the funeral industry is burial in "green," or natural, cemeteries — which prohibit embalming, metal caskets and concrete burial vaults, and generally forbid traditional headstones in favor of small, engraved indigenous stones, trees or shrubs. While the practice is still rare, it has started catching on among the environmentally — and economically — conscious. "There's increasing interest in it," Slocum says. "It's really a return to the way we always used to do it."

Of course, this is just more bad news for funeral directors, who make their money on all the extra products and services, like metal caskets and embalming, that green cemeteries prohibit. "They don't know what to think of [the trend]," Slocum says.

In addition to being green, forgoing embalming services and selecting simple wooden caskets can save consumers thousands of dollars. At one green cemetery, Ramsey Creek Preserve in Westminster, S.C., caskets aren't even required at all.

While there are still just a handful of such cemeteries in the U.S., you can take advantage of green options such as forgoing embalming and using wooden caskets anywhere.