Rhode Island Burial at Public Expense

Section 30-25-3 provides that whenever a person who served in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Space Force, or Marine Corps during any period of war, and was honorably discharged, dies within Rhode Island without leaving means sufficient to defray necessary funeral expenses, that person shall be buried and the expenses paid as the chapter provides. Space Force was added by P.L. 2025, ch. 165 and ch. 166, § 12, effective June 24, 2025. Then section 30-25-4 sets the amount, and the amount is the reason this entry exists: "the whole expense of the funeral shall not in any case exceed the sum of fifty-five dollars ($55.00)." Fifty-five dollars. The figure was set in 1920 by P.L. 1920, ch. 1843 and has never been raised. In 2026 it buys nothing. Any list of Rhode Island veterans benefits that names "burial at public expense" without naming the ceiling is describing a benefit that does not exist in any practical sense, and a family relying on it will discover that at the worst possible moment. Say the useful thing instead. A family without means should be looking at the Rhode Island Veterans Memorial Cemetery in this catalog, where interment of the veteran is free, and at the federal VA burial allowance, which is a real figure and is adjusted. The $55 is not a supplement worth organising around. What the chapter does give, and this part still matters, is the machinery and the dignity rule. Each town council and city council annually designates a proper person, expressly not one of those designated by law for the care of paupers or the custody of criminals, to cause the interment. Where the deceased has relatives or friends who want to conduct the burial but are unable or unwilling to pay, they are allowed to conduct the funeral and the cost of interment is paid to them by the town or city treasurer on due proof. The claim for payment must be made within sixty days after the death. Section 30-25-5 provides that an interment under the chapter shall not be made in any cemetery or plot used exclusively for the pauper dead, and that if an honorably discharged veteran has already been buried in a place used exclusively for the burial of paupers, they shall be removed as soon as may be after the town or city council's attention is called to it. That is a standing duty to disinter and rebury, and it is the strongest sentence in the chapter. Related provisions in the same chapter care for the dead more generally. Sections 30-25-10 and 30-25-11 authorise the director to undertake the care of any neglected or abandoned grave of any soldier or sailor who fought in the Revolution or who at any time served the United States in any war, with a right to enter public or private cemeteries to clear the grave and repair markers, after obtaining written permission from whoever has custody or, where no such person can be found, without further notice. Section 30-25-8 makes the director custodian of the Rhode Island soldiers' burial lots in the north cemetery in Bristol. No disability rating is involved, so the rating filter never hides this entry.