Cremation Services

EvergreenHealth Medical Center at 12040 NE 128th Street is Kirkland’s own hospital, licensed for 354 beds, and it is where most Kirkland residents who die in the hospital die. It is not part of a health system. It is a public hospital district, legally King County Public Hospital District No. 2, created by a vote of local residents in November 1967 and opened with 76 beds in March 1972.

Worth knowing if you are weighing the alternatives: Swedish Redmond has no inpatient beds, only an emergency department, surgery and clinics, so a death there is unusual. Overlake in Bellevue is the other full hospital within reach.

For hospice, the Wockner Hospice Care Center at 12822 124th Lane NE is a fifteen-bed inpatient facility that EvergreenHealth describes as the only free-standing hospice center in western Washington. The number is 425-899-1070. Their home hospice team works from 11800 NE 128th Street, Suite 200, at 425-899-3300, covering King and Snohomish counties.

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.

Worth knowing before you plan the errand: any local health department in Washington can issue a certified copy of a Washington death record, whatever county the death occurred in. Each one sets its own service charge and in-person hours, so a call first is sensible.

In practice the nearest to Kirkland is King County’s, and there is no Eastside office: 201 South Jackson Street, Suite 220, Seattle, WA 98104, at 206-837-0719, weekdays 8:30 to 4:30, opening at 9:00 on the first Wednesday of each month.

Certified copies are $25.00 each, first copy and every additional copy alike, with no discount for ordering several. 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.

One thing that comes up in Finn Hill, North Juanita and Kingsgate: those neighborhoods were Bothell or unincorporated King County addresses until Kirkland annexed them on June 1, 2011, so older records and older paperwork may not say Kirkland at all. It makes no difference to the death record, which is a King County record either way, but it does explain the mismatch when you go looking.

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.

The Kirkland Reporter is still publishing and has not been folded into another title, which is not something that can be said of every weekly in this region. It is now owned by Carpenter Media Group. Obituaries go through kirklandreporter.com or 360-802-8212. There is no rate card; the fee depends on length, type treatment and photographs, and they call you back with a figure.

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.

Yes, and this is one of the few questions here with a clear answer. Washington’s statute is RCW 68.50.130. 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 the state’s navigable waters, lakes included, among the places where scattering is permitted, and describes no permit for it. Lake Washington is such a water. Their one practical instruction is to pour the ashes from the container and dispose of the container separately, along with any identifying disc, rather than putting either in the lake.

Scattering from the shoreline is a different matter. Marina Park, Juanita Beach and Houghton Beach are City of Kirkland land, which under the same statute makes the city the agency whose approval is needed. From a boat, that question does not arise. National parks need the chief ranger’s permission and state trust land needs the Department of Natural Resources.

Scattering at sea is available through us for $195.

Kirkland is the rare case where we can tell you exactly, because the cemetery is owned by the city and the city publishes its rates. Almost nothing else in this market does. Kirkland Cemetery is at the corner of NE 80th Street and 120th Avenue; the Cemetery Clerk is at 425-587-3111.

Two things to know first. Full-size burial plots are sold out, with a waiting list only, so what remains is urn garden plots, niche walls and the infant section. In practice it is now a cremation cemetery. And non-resident rates are exactly one and a half times resident rates, so it is worth asking the clerk which you are.

On the schedule effective January 1, 2026, for a resident: an urn garden plot is $1,330 and a level one Entry Way niche is $1,780. Interment is charged separately, at $1,700 for a cremation plot or $1,520 for a niche wall on a weekday before three o’clock, more on the weekend. Niche lettering is $360. So a resident urn garden plot with weekday interment comes to about $3,030, and a level one niche with interment about $3,300. Niches are ten inches square.

For comparison, Holyrood Catholic Cemetery in Shoreline publishes cremation graves at $1,355 with a $705 ground opening, and niches from $4,520. Sunset Hills in Bellevue, Evergreen Washelli in Seattle and Floral Hills in Lynnwood are all Dignity Memorial properties, and none of them publishes a niche or interment price you can hold against Kirkland’s.

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.

None of what follows is offered by the people who owe it to you. It has to be asked for. Working down this list in order is the fastest way through it.

Social Security’s lump-sum death payment is $255. It has been $255 since 1954, so nobody is getting rich, but it is yours and it will not arrive unless you ask. Surviving spouse first; otherwise a child under 18, or under 20 and still in school, or disabled before 21. Two years to apply. Call 1-800-772-1213, weekdays 8:00 to 7:00. An online start is possible through a my Social Security account. Walk-ins are no longer the norm, so book an appointment, and use ssa.gov/locator to find the right office. We do not list addresses here on purpose, because they move and we would rather not be the reason for a wasted journey.

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. Fort Lawton in Seattle is nearer as the crow flies but closed to new interments.

Straight from the VA: the benefit covers “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.” Cremated remains are treated no differently, being inurned “in the same manner and with the same honors as casketed remains.” A spouse or dependent child may be interred at no cost, their name inscribed on the veteran’s headstone rather than a marker of their own. Remarriage does not disqualify a surviving spouse, whatever you may have been told. Interments are scheduled centrally rather than by the cemetery: 1-800-535-1117, with discharge documentation faxed to 1-866-900-6417.

The VA also pays cash. For a non-service-connected death that is a $1,002 burial allowance and a $1,002 plot allowance as of October 1, 2025, on VA Form 21P-530EZ within two years of burial. Understand the interaction before you plan around it: the plot allowance is not paid when the interment is in a national cemetery. The free niche and the plot allowance are alternatives. 1-800-827-1000 is the number.

If the person served, the King County Veterans Program is worth a call before anything else local. It assists with burial expenses under the county’s RCW 73.08 obligation, and eligibility reaches anyone with a single day of service, any discharge type, plus their family members in King County. Take identification, proof of service and proof of income. 206-263-8387, offices in Tukwila and Seattle. RCW 73.08.070 sets a hard floor: the county must pay at least $300 toward an indigent veteran’s disposition.

Tribal enrollment opens doors that nothing else does, and most tribes run their own funds. The closest are the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, 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 help exists too, up to $3,500 in Bureau of Indian Affairs burial assistance for indigent enrolled members, through the Puget Sound Agency in Everett at 425-622-9158. For accuracy: the Duwamish Tribe is not federally recognized, so it is not a route to those funds.

If this was a homicide, do not pay for the cremation before reading this. Washington’s Crime Victims Compensation Program, at Labor and Industries, pays up to $7,990 toward funeral and burial expenses, and provides grief counseling for immediate family. The crime has to have been reported to police, and the application must arrive within three years of the report. Call 1-800-762-3716.

If there is truly nothing, do not assume you are on your own. The Indigent Remains Program at the King County Medical Examiner’s Office funds cremation for people who die in the county with no resources and no family able to arrange it. It is not quick, roughly ninety days, and it turns on a next-of-kin search and a review of the person’s finances rather than a published income line. The number is 206-731-3232, extension 5, and the statute is RCW 36.39.030.

Something particular to Kirkland: the city owns and runs Kirkland Cemetery and, unlike almost every private cemetery in this region, publishes its rates. A resident urn garden plot is $1,330 and a level one niche is $1,780, with interment charged separately. The Cemetery Clerk is at 425-587-3111. Full burial plots are sold out, so it is now in practice a cremation cemetery.

Where none of this helps, we would still rather hear from you than have you go into debt over a cremation. Call and we will go through it properly.