Direct cremation in Dallas — $1,750

Where Dallas transfers usually begin

Roughly three quarters of the calls we take from within the city come from one of three places: a hospital, a hospice, or a private residence under hospice care. Each behaves differently, and knowing which one you are in tells you what happens next.

From a Dallas hospital

The major receiving hospitals in the city are Baylor University Medical Center on Gaston Avenue, Parkland Memorial on Harry Hines, Methodist Dallas in Oak Cliff, Texas Health Presbyterian on Walnut Hill, Medical City Dallas on Forest Lane, and the UT Southwestern clinical campus. All of them hold a decedent in their morgue until a named provider comes.

There is no urgency from the hospital’s side and nobody will pressure you. Tell the nurse or the decedent affairs office that you have chosen Cremations of Dallas, give them our phone number, and call us. We handle the release paperwork with them directly.

From a Dallas hospice

Dallas has a dense hospice network, including the T. Boone Pickens Hospice and Palliative Care Center in northeast Dallas and a number of home-hospice agencies operating citywide. In a hospice death the attending nurse pronounces and completes their portion of the paperwork, which usually makes the death certificate move faster than average.

Call the hospice first. Then call us, and we will time our arrival to the nurse’s so you are not sitting through two separate visits.

From a private residence

If your loved one was on hospice at home, the process above applies. If the death was unexpected, call 911 first. In Dallas County an unattended death is referred to the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences on Redbird Lane, which is the county medical examiner. They decide whether an autopsy is needed and they release the body when they are finished.

That release is the one part of a Dallas cremation nobody can speed up. It can take a few hours or a couple of days. We will not pretend otherwise, and any provider who promises to shorten it is describing something they do not control.

The Dallas County paperwork

Two documents govern the timeline. The death certificate has to be signed by the attending physician, the hospice medical director, or the medical examiner, and then filed electronically with Texas Vital Statistics. The cremation permit is issued by the county once that filing is accepted.

Only after both exist can the cremation happen — and separately, Texas law requires a 48-hour wait from the time of death. In practice the certificate signature is what sets the pace, and it is the single most common reason a cremation takes eleven days instead of seven.

Certified copies cost $21 for the first and $4 for each additional copy. We order them with your filing and pass the cost through without a markup. Order more than you think you need; most Dallas families use four or five.

Neighborhoods and the rest of the county

We transfer from every part of the city — Oak Cliff, Pleasant Grove, East Dallas, Lakewood, Preston Hollow, Lake Highlands, Far North Dallas, Uptown, and the southern sector. Being based on Greenville Avenue puts us closest to the northern and eastern neighborhoods, but the $1,750 is identical wherever in the city you are, and so is the service.

Beyond the city limits we cover the rest of Dallas County and four more — Collin, Denton, Tarrant and Rockwall — taking in Irving, Richardson, Plano, Frisco, McKinney, Arlington and Fort Worth at the same price. See the full service area.

Dallas questions