GRAVESITE AVAILABILITY

The Franklin Cemetery has had a longstanding policy that the cemetery is available to everyone, regardless of religious faith, ethnicity, social standing, or any cultural circumstances. Nor is it limited to people by any geographical residence requirement. We have families in California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, New Jersey as well as all over the State of Michigan.


THE COST OF BURIALS

The Board of Directors of the Franklin Cemetery continually strive to ensure that the Cemetery is a  beautiful and well-managed setting for a place that insures a perpetually maintained memorial for those who are buried on its grounds.  This requires a careful balance of current expenses with anticipated future expenses when future plots are no longer available and income is not available from lot sales. In short, this requires careful stewardship, objective consideration of actuarial realities and proper actions to fulfil promises. The Cemetery Trust Fund is on schedule to meet the anticipated future needs, but the future is a difficult thing to predict. The fact remains that the present income of the Cemetery (derived from grave sales, fees, and donations) does not have much room for miscalculation. Grave prices are marginally adequate when one considers the realistic costs of administration, grounds maintenance, insurance, tree replacement, fence and road repair and upkeep, and efforts to protect historic elements of the Cemetery where there are no longer families to provide for the care of their graves.

The Cemetery has approximately 700 remaining grave sites available for purchase at either:

$3,000 or $4,000 per grave (depending on what part of the cemetery the grave is located). You can acquire more detailed information on other pages on this website or by contacting the Cemetery Administrator, Steve Bancroft, at 248-200-9493 or by email at franklincemetery@outlook.com.

There is an old saw that says nothing is sure except death and taxes. Taxes are fungible, but death most certainly isn’t. We all know that we exit this existence by only one means, dying. Few people like to consider that eventuality, and many simply ignore the prospect all-together. However, ignoring it, or pushing back reasonable consideration of that life-event will not change when it might happen and what will be the circumstances around it.

As an Episcopal priest for 45 years, I can say with some assurance borne of experience that not planning for end-of life issues is fraught with very bad potential results, not to say being patently unfair to the surviving loved ones. It takes very little effort to plan for what will come to all of us, and in doing so, will save money, remove worry and future headaches, and assure that what you want to happen with you…will. Establishing wills, trusts, medical directions, burial arrangements and building those considerations into your financial and future life planning removes a lot of future problems, for everyone.