The department ordered Bellwood to cease and desist selling markers or monuments to customers, and fined the cemetery $23,000.
Russell Reese, director of special audits with the Texas Department of Banking, said they perform on-site examinations once every 12 to 15 months at more than 200 cemeteries to ensure compliance. Bellwood failed to fulfill its obligation to order and set markers in a timely manner, Reese said.
“When you take money from a consumer on markers and monuments, once that contract becomes fully paid, and that consumer has initialed that’s the design I want, there’s timelines that are now required for these cemeteries to order the markers,” Reese said, adding the cemeteries are also obliged to promptly install them.
Ray D. Harper, Bellwood owner and manager, said the cemetery filed an appeal with the state.
“The cemetery does have corporate legal counsel,” Harper said. “I’ve been advised by him what I need to do. We’re at odds with each other, the department and us, over some of the claims. We’re not through with the matter at all.”
But the assistant general counsel with the state Department of Banking said that’s not so.
“He’s incorrect. We notified him that he needed to file a motion for rehearing with the department or the administrative law judge by Dec. 15. He did not do that, so the orders became final,” said Deborah Loomis.
During the investigation, Reese said the Department of Banking received consumers complaints against Bellwood that their monuments and markers were arriving “very late.”
Justin McClure of Stephenville said it took about a year and a half for Bellwood to fulfill its obligation of providing a tombstone for his mother’s gravesite.
“Always, it was ordered, and was going to be here the coming week,” McClure said, regarding conversations with Bellwood staff. “My dad, he lives in Temple, he would go out there and continually check on the dates they said the tombstone was supposed to arrive. Nothing would ever show up. It just went on and on and on and on … this was the time we were supposed to be grieving for my mom.”
McClure said the family was so upset they contacted local police to see if it was legal to picket the cemetery.
Harper said Bellwood addressed the complaint and acted on it.
“We’re not disputing his being upset,” Harper said. “He went through the proper channel and filed the complaint. We addressed the complaint with the department, solved the complaint and released the complaint as closed. I can’t make the complaint go away, but it was handled in the proper way.”
The Texas Department of Banking regulates a little more than 250 for-profit cemeteries larger than 10 acres not city or county owned. Bellwood falls under this jurisdiction.
