Cremation Services

St. Francis Hospital at 34515 9th Avenue South is the hospital inside the city, with a round-the-clock emergency department, a family birth center and a heart and vascular program. It is part of Virginia Mason Franciscan Health, which in turn belongs to CommonSpirit. If you have seen it called CHI Franciscan, that branding was retired.

The two others in reach are MultiCare Auburn Medical Center at 202 North Division Street and St. Joseph Medical Center at 1717 South J Street in Tacoma. St. Joseph is the region’s Level II trauma center, which means sudden deaths, serious accidents and complex transfers from Federal Way often end there. It is also in Pierce County, which is the point of the next question.

We collect from all of these, and from private homes and care facilities, at any hour. If your person is on hospice service, their nurse can call us directly, whichever agency they are with.

Yes, and it changes what the paperwork costs. The record is filed in the county where the death occurred, not the county where the person lived. A Federal Way resident who dies at St. Francis is a King County death. The same person who dies at St. Joseph or St. Clare in Tacoma, roughly twelve miles south, is a Pierce County death, and the filing runs through Tacoma rather than Seattle.

On August 3, 2026, Pierce County launched its Disposition Authorization Program. Under Pierce County Code Chapter 8.102, created by Council Ordinance C2025-552, the Pierce County Medical Examiner must now authorize final disposition for every death in the county, including deaths certified by a physician rather than by the medical examiner. The authorization carries a $100 fee under Pierce County Code 4.58.070. Two exemptions sit in the fee code, and they are not the same strength. The Medical Examiner may not charge the fee where Pierce County bears the cost of the disposition. Where the disposition was paid for in full before January 1, 2026, the Medical Examiner may waive it, which is a discretion rather than a right, so ask rather than assume.

That fee applies to every funeral home working in Pierce County, ours included. Local fees on a Pierce County death come to $125.80: $100.00 for the medical examiner’s disposition authorization, $15.00 to the county, and $10.80 to Washington State. In King County the equivalent is $110.80, being $100.00 to the medical examiner and $10.80 to the state. Our cremation price is $1,194 on either side of the line. The local fees are not ours, and we itemize them so you can check them against the county’s own schedule.

One thing this does not affect is where you order certified copies afterward, which you can do at any local health department in Washington. What the county line fixes is where the death is registered, and that follows the place of death. We work both sides of it, we file where the record belongs, and we will tell you which county you are dealing with before you have to ask.

Here is a genuinely useful one, and it works the opposite way round from the question above. Where the death is registered is decided by the county it happened in. Where you order the certificate is not. Any local health department in Washington can issue a certified copy of a Washington death record.

For a Federal Way family that saves a drive. The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department at 3629 South D Street, Tacoma, at (253) 649-1401, is closer than Seattle. Call them first and say which county the death was in: the statewide electronic register holds recent deaths from anywhere in Washington, but each office publishes its own scope and the earliest year it can reach varies. The King County counter, if you would rather, is at 201 South Jackson Street, Suite 220, Seattle, at 206-837-0719, weekdays 8:30 to 4:30, opening at 9:00 on the first Wednesday of the month. There is no King County office south of Seattle. Service charges and walk-in hours differ between health departments, so call before you set off.

Certified copies are $25.00 each, first copy and every additional copy alike. In person at the kiosk it is $28.50 and takes ten to fifteen minutes. By mail it is $25.00 plus a $4.00 fee and takes two to three weeks. Online or by phone it is $25.00 plus $6.00 and $11.50 in handling, delivered in four to five business days.

There is no deadline. King County holds every King County death from 1944 and every Washington death from 2015. A certified copy is limited to close family and legal representatives, but anyone may order a noncertified informational copy without proving a relationship.

We order certificates for the families we serve at $30 each and file the record for you, in either county, which for a Federal Way family saves a trip to Seattle or to Tacoma depending on where the death happened.

The Federal Way Mirror is still publishing, now under Carpenter Media Group rather than Sound Publishing. Obituaries go through federalwaymirror.com or 360-802-8212. There is no published rate; the fee depends on length, type treatment and photographs, and they contact you with a figure after you submit.

The Seattle Times is the regional paper of record and its own obituary desk starts at $366.45, covering one day in print at one inch, an optional print photograph, an online obituary and a perpetual guest book. In Memoriam notices start at $266.95. Lower figures for the Times circulate on third-party placement sites and are not the Times’ own rate.

A complete obituary on this site, with photographs, is included in our price at no charge.

Washington does have a statute on this, RCW 68.50.130, and it is more permissive than the wording first suggests. After cremation, ashes may be scattered on private property with the owner’s consent, and on public land or water with the approval of the agency that controls it. Keeping ashes at home, dividing them among family members, or burying them is not restricted at all.

The Department of Licensing lists Puget Sound and the state’s navigable waters among the permitted places, and asks that the container be disposed of separately from the ashes rather than put in the water. Dash Point and Saltwater are state parks, so scattering from the beach there is public land and needs the park’s approval; from a boat on the Sound it does not.

Scattering at sea is available through us for $195.

There is no cemetery inside Federal Way that we can point you to, so the options are north and east.

Washington Memorial Park at 16445 International Boulevard in SeaTac is seventy acres with a funeral home and crematory on the grounds, at 206-242-1787. Its Mountain View Columbarium has indoor and outdoor niches, and there are urn gardens, scattering gardens and a boulder garden where remains are placed in a private boulder beside the water feature. It has been owned by Bonney Watson since 1978.

Tahoma National Cemetery at 18600 SE 240th Street, at 425-413-9614, is the option for a veteran’s family, and a good many never learn they qualify. It takes cremated remains in columbarium niches and in-ground garden sites, and burial in a VA national cemetery is provided at no cost to the family, including the niche, its opening and closing, and a government marker. Eligibility covers veterans not dishonorably discharged, spouses and surviving spouses even if they remarried, and minor children. Confirm eligibility and availability with the office.

Mountain View Memorial Park at 4100 Steilacoom Boulevard SW in Lakewood is the nearest option south of the county line, at 253-948-9895.

We do not sell cemetery property and we take no commission on it, so you are free to arrange this directly with whichever cemetery you choose.

A surprising amount of this goes unclaimed, not because families are careless but because no one is obliged to mention it. Here is what to check, roughly in order of how often it applies.

Start with Social Security’s $255 lump-sum death payment. Small, but nobody sends it to you. A surviving spouse claims it; if there is no spouse, a child aged 17 or under, or 18 to 19 and still at school, or disabled before 21. The deadline is two years from the death. Call 1-800-772-1213 between 8:00 and 7:00 on a weekday and ask to apply for the lump-sum death payment. A my Social Security account may let you start it online. In-person visits now need an appointment booked in advance, and the live office list is at ssa.gov/locator. We deliberately do not publish street addresses for these offices, because stale ones send grieving people to locked doors.

If the person was a veteran, start here before anything else. Tahoma National Cemetery, 18600 SE 240th Street near Kent, is the nearest VA national cemetery accepting new interments, at 425-413-9614. It has room in both columbarium niches and in-ground cremation sites.

What the VA actually provides, in its own words: “a gravesite in any of our national cemeteries with available space, opening and closing of the grave, perpetual care, a Government headstone or marker, a burial flag, and a Presidential Memorial Certificate, at no cost to the family.” And on cremation specifically, that cremated remains are inurned “in the same manner and with the same honors as casketed remains.” Spouses and dependent children are covered as well, at no cost, with the name inscribed on the veteran’s headstone rather than on one of their own. Note that remarriage after the veteran’s death does not end a surviving spouse’s eligibility. Families assume it does and it does not. At need, call the National Cemetery Scheduling Office on 1-800-535-1117 and fax the discharge papers to 1-866-900-6417. The cemetery itself cannot book it for you.

There is also a cash allowance, separate from the cemetery. For a death not connected to service the VA pays $1,002 as a burial allowance and $1,002 as a plot allowance, current from October 1, 2025, on Form 21P-530EZ, filed within two years of burial. Watch this: the plot allowance disappears if you use a national cemetery, since the plot cost you nothing. It is one or the other. The VA line is 1-800-827-1000.

For a veteran with no money, the county has a duty and a program. The King County Veterans Program can pay toward burial, on 206-263-8387, and the closer of its two offices is at 645 Andover Park West, Suite 100, in Tukwila. One day of service qualifies, any discharge type, and family members of veterans qualify too. Bring ID, proof of service and proof of income. Behind it sits RCW 73.08.070, which requires the county to pay for the disposition of an indigent veteran, or an indigent veteran’s family member, at not less than $300.

Enrolled tribal members should call the tribe before anything else, since most administer their own assistance. The tribes with reservations or offices nearest this part of the county are the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe in Auburn, enrollment (253) 876-3141; the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, (253) 573-7849; the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe, (425) 888-6551 option 3; the Suquamish Tribe, (360) 394-8437; and the Tulalip Tribes, 360-716-4300. Federal burial assistance of up to $3,500 exists for indigent enrolled members through the Bureau of Indian Affairs Puget Sound Agency in Everett, 425-622-9158. Note carefully that the Duwamish Tribe, though very much present here, is not federally recognized and cannot access those federal funds.

Where a death is a homicide, the state pays. Washington’s Crime Victims Compensation Program, run by Labor and Industries, covers up to $7,990 of funeral and burial costs, with grief counseling for immediate family on top. Two conditions: the crime must have been reported to police, and you have three years from that report to apply. The number is 1-800-762-3716. Very few funeral homes mention this and it is real money.

Where there is no money at all, the county must act. Washington’s RCW 36.39.030 requires it, and King County discharges the duty through the Medical Examiner’s Indigent Remains Program. It funds cremation for people who die here without resources or family to claim them. There is no income threshold published; the decision follows a next-of-kin search and a review of finances, and takes about ninety days. Call 206-731-3232, extension 5.

A Federal Way warning worth having. There is a Social Security building at 1701 South Commons, but it is the Alaska Satellite Office, not a local field office, and turning up there with a death claim will waste your morning.

And if none of it applies to your situation, say so and we will look again with you. Ten minutes on the phone is cheaper than a loan.