How to check an Ohio funeral home's licence, or file a complaint

One licence, one address

Ohio licenses premises, not brands. ORC 4717.01 defines a funeral home as a fixed place for the care, preparation for burial or disposition of bodies or the conducting of funerals, and adds that "Each business location is a funeral home, regardless of common ownership or management." ORC 4717.06 then binds the licence to the address, and requires the funeral home licence, together with the licences of the embalmers and funeral directors it employs, to be displayed in a conspicuous place inside the building.

Two consequences follow for anyone comparing chapels. A group with several chapels holds several licences, one per address, and each is inspected as its own premises; one licensed funeral director may supervise more than one funeral home. And a change of majority ownership requires the licence to be surrendered within thirty days and a fresh application to be made, under ORC 4717.11, while the home continues operating in the meantime. The name over the door is not required to change when that happens, and Ohio administrative rule 4717-16-01 expressly allows an approved facility name to transfer to a new facility on application. A long-established family name on a sign is therefore not evidence of anything about who owns the business today.

Looking up a licence

The board's guidance to the public is that "You can verify a license issued by the Board via eLicense, Ohio's electronic Professional Licensure System", where you can review licences for individuals and businesses, see the type of licence held, check whether it is active, and view any board disciplinary action charged against it. Because the licence is address-bound, check the address as well as the name: a group's licence for one chapel says nothing about another chapel down the road.

This directory publishes no licence numbers and no licence status for any listing, and that is deliberate rather than an oversight. A licence number is only worth printing if it was read off the licensing authority's own record, and Ohio's register refused our automated requests when this site was built. A number copied from a business's own website is the business's assertion, not the board's record, so we do not repeat one.

Filing a complaint, and where it goes

Complaints about a funeral home, an embalmer, a funeral director, a crematory or a preneed contract go to the Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, submitted electronically through eLicense. The board's published description of what happens next is short: the complaint is assigned a case number and given to a member of the compliance staff, and the subject of the complaint is notified and has fourteen days to respond.

One thing to weigh before filing: the board states that "A complaint submitted to the Board is considered a public record and is subject to a request under the Ohio Public Records Act." It is not a private channel.

Send the complaint to the right regulator. The board does not investigate cemetery complaints, which go to the Ohio Cemetery Dispute Resolution Commission instead. Cemetery preneed merchandise reporting sits with the Division of Real Estate at the Ohio Department of Commerce, and preneed contracts funded by insurance are enforced, as against insurers and agents, by the Superintendent of Insurance. Where a funeral home or crematory happens to be located at a cemetery, it is still board-licensed and the board still regulates it.

Who to contact

Ohio Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, 77 South High Street, 16th Floor, Columbus, OH 43215-6108, telephone (614) 466-4252, email info@funeral.ohio.gov. The board describes its own mission as protecting consumers and regulating the funeral profession and cremation services to ensure competency and ethical behaviour, and it employs inspectors who may enter the premises of any embalmer, funeral director or crematory operator in the state.

For matters under the federal Funeral Rule, such as a refusal to hand over a price list, the regulator is the Federal Trade Commission rather than the board. The two are separate: an Ohio licence question and a Funeral Rule question go to different places.

What this directory checks, and what it does not

Every listing here shows a verification status, and today every listing on this site reads unverified. That is an accurate statement rather than a modest one. Verification means an independent source confirmed the stored details, and the source that confirms cannot be the source that supplied them; for these records the details came from each business's own website, and Ohio's licence register was unreachable when the site was built. Publishing an unverified label is the honest option, and it will change per listing as checks are actually performed.

Money never buys any of this. Paid placement never changes organic ranking and never changes a listing's verification status, and any sponsored or featured placement is labelled as such where it appears. A business does not have to pay, respond, or take part in any way to be listed, and none of the listings here was solicited.

This page is general information about how Ohio's regulator and this site work, read on 6 August 2026, and is not legal advice. Confirm anything you intend to rely on with the board.