Bucks County Burial Allowance, Headstones and Grave Markers

The duties are the State's, under 16 Pa.C.S. Chapter 155; see the Pennsylvania entry on county burial and grave benefits. The Department of Veterans Affairs (215-345-3307) takes the applications. The allowance. Bucks County pays $100 toward the funeral and burial of an honorably discharged veteran who served during any war, even for one day, and whose legal residence at death was in the county. It pays $100 toward the funeral of the widow of such a veteran who lived in the county. Both must be claimed within one year of the death, as the county page says. The statutory minimum is $75 each (sections 15509 and 15510), so Bucks pays more. The spouse's allowance is for a widow or a widower; the statute bars only a spouse who remarried after the veteran's death. Headstones. The county pays up to $50 to install a federal marker or to add lettering to an existing memorial, and its page lists a $100 allowance for a granite headstone. Section 15513 makes the county provide a concrete or granite base for a federal headstone, or the lettering, at actual cost, approved before the work starts; a family whose cost is more than the page's figure should ask the department to apply under that section. Markers and flags. The department gives grave markers for each war, from the Revolution to the Persian Gulf War, free to veterans' organizations that place them and to families who ask. It buys the Memorial Day flags for veterans' graves; the commissioners extended the flag contract through 2026 for $32,791.92. A family may keep the flag after the first working day after Veterans Day. On the wartime test. The county pays for wartime service, as most counties do. The statute's definition reaches any veteran whose separation was honorable, but the proof it asks for is a record of wartime service (section 15516); a peacetime veteran's family should still ask.