Perpetual Care

What is Perpetual Care?

Perpetual Care ensures the upkeep of your family grave. Once under Perpetual Care, New Orleans Catholic Cemeteries maintains the grave. A trust fund was established many years ago for the sole purpose of offering families peace of mind and ensuring the logevity and beauty of our New Orleans Catholic Cemeteries for future generations.

Why do we offer Perpetual Care?

Thanks to generous donations, New Orleans Catholic Cemeteries works to build, repair, restore and maintain our sacred spaces to their original beauty. We work with families and donors to help fund our ongoing efforts. But these donations do not reach every tomb in need of repair. The Perpetual Care Agreement is the best plan yet devised by modern cemetery management to provide continued maintenance and care of memorials forever. This is the only sure protection against possible neglect and certain deterioration in the future years when there may be no one to take an interest in a person's memorial. For that reason, the Perpetual Care Agreement is offered as a service to all well managed cemeteries throughout the country.

Investing in Perpetual Care ensures that your family memorial will be maintained and removes the necessity of spending more money in the years ahead for maintenance and repairs.
 
Whenever we are able to interest one family in making improvements on their memorial, we invite and encourage those who have adjacent burial facilities to participate in improving theirs. If such cooperation is obtained in time, all of our cemeteries can be rehabilitated. Our staff is trained in historic brick restoration and can give you information on how best to restore your family memorial.

Under a Perpetual Care Agreement:

• The cemetery enters into an irrevocable contract with the owner to maintain the memorial in perpetuity in the condition it is in when the agreement is made.
• For his part, the owner pays to the cemetery a lump sum of money which is placed in a trust and never expended. The interest earned from the trust is used to provide regular care and maintenance and to make repairs of whichever kind as are required to keep the memorial in first class condition.
• The “once for all” payment for perpetual care is the last expenditure an owner will have to make in the maintenance of his memorial.
• A tomb, coping or plot will never be neglected or abandoned as occurs when a family dies out or descendants either move away or, as also happens, simply lose interest many generations later.

We are currently assessing all Perpetual Care memorials for necessary repairs. St. Vincent Cemeteries, St. Roch Cemeteries, and St. Patrick Cemeteries Nos. 2 & 3 have been completed. To receive a no obligation quotation on your family grave, please call Joseph Connor at 504-488-5200 or email [email protected].