By Thomas A. Parmalee
Deathcare professionals guide families through their darkest hours, orchestrating beautiful services, offering a shoulder to lean on and providing dignified farewells.
But there is also an unspoken reality: When families return home after a funeral, an overwhelming wave usually hits—one that makes it harder to cope and recover from loss.
It’s the administrative nightmare of everything that comes after a loved one dies.
Between closing bank accounts, navigating government benefits and dealing with real estate, grieving families are often left stranded in a labyrinth of bureaucracy.
That is where MAPP Network steps in, offering funeral homes a seamless way to extend their continuum of care far beyond the chapel walls.
A Legacy Forged in Service and Resilience
To understand the heart of MAPP (Memorial Asset Protection Plan) and how it relates to funeral service, you must look at its roots.
The organization is backed by the Bradford-O’Keefe story, which is the family whose grit and ethical business practices inspired the Hollywood drama The Burial, starring Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones, which chronicled their landmark legal victory against the now defunct Loewen Group. The lawsuit ultimately resulted in a $500 million jury award for the OʼKeefes, who continue to operate several funeral homes and cemeteries in Mississippi under the Bradford O’Keefe Funeral Homes umbrella.
The verdict allowed the family to help establish the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in Biloxi, Mississippi, named in honor of Annette O’Keefe, who was so instrumental in its creation.
MAPP itself was born directly out of personal tragedy.
Justin B. O’Keefe, a fifth-generation funeral professional and estate planning expert, suffered the heartbreaking loss of his oldest son, Adam, in a car accident. Despite his decades of financial and estate experience, Justin found the process of settling his son’s affairs to be confusing, stressful, and emotionally exhausting.
Recognizing this massive gap in aftercare, he began personally following up with families at the family funeral home, where he is a licensed funeral director and preneed consultant. What started as a local outreach program evolved in 2017 into a nationwide network that today services about 1,200 funeral homes across the country.
“When people go through changes of life — whether it’s going into an assisted living facility or prearranging their funerals, these are major life events,” O’Keefe said in an interview with FuneralVision.com. “So, what happened, is we realized that we could really be more impactful and help families in a broader way by connecting them with these other professionals.”
The program has been extremely well received at the O’Keefe funeral homes, O’Keefe said.
“We had to figure out a way to serve this market without being intrusive or offending people, so it took several years to figure it out,” he said. “Then, we started marketing it to other firms through Precoa and other third-party marketers, and it has evolved.”
MAPP also has partnerships in place with numerous other partners, including Homesteaders Life Company, Full Circle Aftercare, the International Order of the Golden Rule and Professional Partners.
What Is MAPP Network?
MAPP Network is a premier marketplace that acts as a bridge between the families you serve and a vetted ecosystem of trusted professionals.
“As funeral professionals, we are great at two things: Prearranging a funeral or cremation and then executing on those plans when a person passes away,” O’Keefe said. “But what we haven’t been good at is connecting those other dots for all these other professionals. For instance, families may need a financial adviser because they had to put Dad in a nursing home because Mama passed away.”
The types of questions families ask varies, O’Keefe said. “Dad may have worked at Walmart for 40 years, and they want to know how to get the 401K out of his name and into Mama’s name,” he said.
He added, “So many people do not understand the tax implications for inherited money,” noting that he recently rushed to meet someone to help them avoid a $300,000 tax bill because of a misstep they made in withdrawing money from a 401K instead of putting it into a similar vehicle in their own name.
All of that is made easier for families when funeral homes belong to the MAPP Network, he said.
Through a simple, compassionate process, MAPP automatically enrolls families served by your funeral home, giving them immediate access to specialized guidance delivered in steps:
- Step 1: Enrollment: Automatically included via your funeral home services.
- Step 2: Outreach: A MAPP estate specialist contacts the family to build a plan.
- Step 3: Guidance: Ongoing support from certified experts until every task is done.
Rather than leaving families to search blindly for help, a dedicated MAPP estate specialist acts as a concierge over the phone to manage critical logistics:
- Government Benefits: Transitioning Social Security, Veterans Administration, and OPM benefits.
- Finances & Protection: Managing pension plans, 401(k)s, annuities, life insurance claims, and placing fraud alerts with credit bureaus to prevent identity theft. MAPP has a partnership with Simplicity Group, which has more than $27 billion under management and offices throughout the country, Justin B. O’Keefe said. MAPP also has relationships with Charles Schwab and Fidelity, he said.
- Estate Logistics: Assisting with property titling, stopping solicitor junk mail, and organizing necessary documentation.
The Six Pillars of MAPP Expertise
When a family’s needs extend into complex professional territory, MAPP seamlessly connects them with rigorously vetted, MAPP certified specialists. This network covers six crucial areas of transition:
| Pillar | How it Helps the Family |
| Financial Planning: | Helps navigate inherited IRAs, retirement distributions, and income planning after a loss. |
| Funeral Preplanning: | Directs families back to your preneed counselors to secure peace of mind for the future. |
| Real Estate: | Provides sensitive guidance on evaluating property values, downsizing, or selling inherited land. |
| Legal Support: | Connects families with attorneys to manage probate, establish living trusts, or navigate wills. |
| Healthcare Solutions: | Simplifies the complex world of Medicare enrollment, supplemental insurance, and claims. |
| CPAs: | Minimizes tax implications during transitions and ensures accurate financial reporting. |
Why Your Funeral Home Should Partner with MAPP
The staff at MAPP say partner funeral homes are elevating themselves versus competitors. Benefits include the following
- Elevating Your Community Reputation
In the digital age, a funeral home’s reputation is solidified by word-of-mouth and online reviews. When you provide a service that solves a family’s practical, real-world headaches weeks after the funeral, their gratitude skyrockets. MAPP’s real-time communication tools even encourage families to share glowing experiences via Google reviews, organically boosting a firm’s local visibility.
- Fuel Your Preneed Pipeline
MAPP actively protects your future business. When estate specialists speak with family members about the chaos of settling an estate, the conversation naturally turns to the value of planning ahead. MAPP funnels those interested family members directly back to your preneed team, driving prearranged contract growth seamlessly.
- True Peace of Mind with Zero Burden on Your Staff
Your funeral directors are already stretched thin managing the immediate logistics of removals, arrangements, and services. MAPP provides a turnkey aftercare solution that requires zero heavy lifting from your staff, acting as a seamless extension of your brand.
Putting Structure Around an Existing Need
The reality is that funeral directors are already accustomed to being asked questions about estate planning, financial planning and related issues. What MAPP seeks to do is put some structure in responding to those requests, Justin B. O’Keefe said.
“Funeral homes have been very receptive to the message … they have already been giving these referrals for years, but it has been loose and disorganized,” he said. “This is a way to continue serving the family beyond the service – and also a recognition that sometimes, we don’t have time to follow up on everything.”
For the roughly 1,200 funeral homes already doing business with MAPP, communication remains constant. “We are always sharing what is going on with these families,” Justin B. O’Keefe said.
The families MAPP tends to help the most, he said, hail from “middle America,” O’Keefe said.
“If you take a pie chart of 1,000 people, the top 15% already have their finances in order, have an attorney, etc.,” he said. “They have those people on staff and it’s not really our market. The bottom 5 or 10 percent are on Medicaid, or Mama is in a nursing home for 20 years and may not have a nickel to her name when she dies. Then there are 10 or 15 percent where their house is their biggest asset, and they are living paycheck to paycheck. Our market is the people in between.”
By bringing MAPP Network into your service offerings, you ensure that families are never left to walk the difficult path of estate settlement alone, according to MAPP.
To learn more about integrating MAPP Network into your firm’s aftercare program, visit www.mappnetwork.com or call 844.445.6830.
Follow FuneralVision.com on LinkedIn.
Follow FuneralVision.com on X.
Follow FuneralVision.com on Facebook.
