Cremation Services

Valley Medical Center at 400 South 43rd Street is a 341-bed acute care hospital and a Level III trauma center, opened in 1947. In its own words it is the oldest and largest public hospital district in Washington and the largest nonprofit provider in south King County, serving more than 600,000 residents across Renton, Kent, Tukwila and parts of Auburn, Black Diamond, Covington, Federal Way, Maple Valley, Newcastle and Seattle. The number is 425-690-1000.

That reach has a practical consequence. A large share of the deaths recorded in Renton are of people who lived somewhere else in the valley, and the record follows the place of death rather than the address on the driving license.

Heart and Soul Hospice at 15 South Grady Way, Suite 101, at 206-659-9998, is the hospice with a Renton address. Providence Hospice of Seattle covers all of King County at 800-221-8022, and EvergreenHealth runs the inpatient hospice center in Kirkland.

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.

One thing worth knowing before you drive anywhere. A Washington death certificate can be ordered from any local health department in the state, not just the county where the death happened. Fees and in-person hours vary from office to office, so call first, but you are not confined to one counter.

For most Renton families King County’s is still the closest, at 201 South Jackson Street, Suite 220, Seattle, WA 98104, at 206-837-0719. There is no south county office. Hours are weekdays 8:30 to 4:30, except the first Wednesday of each month, when it opens at 9:00.

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.

Because Valley Medical Center is here, most of these are King County records even when the family is not from Renton. There is no deadline: the 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 Renton Reporter is still publishing. It is now owned by Carpenter Media Group rather than Sound Publishing, so references you find to the old publisher are out of date. Obituaries go through rentonreporter.com or 360-802-8212. There is no rate card; they call back with a figure once they have seen the notice, since the price depends on length and photographs.

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 the state’s navigable waters among the permitted places, which covers Lake Washington and the Cedar River, and asks that the container be disposed of separately from the ashes rather than put in the water. Scattering from Gene Coulon Park or another city shoreline is a different question, because that is public land under Renton’s jurisdiction and needs the city’s approval, so a boat is usually the simpler route.

Scattering at sea is available through us for $195.

Greenwood Memorial Park at 350 Monroe Avenue NE is the city’s cemetery, at 425-255-1511. It offers columbaria with indoor and outdoor niches including glass-front, cremation gardens for urn burial or scattering, and cremation pedestals and benches. It is owned by Service Corporation International and trades as Dignity Memorial.

Unusually for a Dignity Memorial property, Greenwood publishes its cemetery prices alongside its cremation price: cremation gardens start at $3,995 and columbarium niches at $11,995. Those are for the space alone and are separate from the cremation itself. Worth knowing before you visit, because the figures are considerably higher than most families expect.

Mount Olivet Cemetery on Blaine Avenue NE is the other ground in town. Call before you count on it, since it does not publish what it takes or what it charges.

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.

Every item below is something a family can claim and most families never hear about. They are listed in the order we would go through them with you on the phone.

Begin with the $255 lump-sum death payment from Social Security. A surviving spouse is first in line, then a child aged 17 or under, 18 or 19 and in full-time school, or disabled before 21. It has to be claimed, and the window is two years from the date of death. Call 1-800-772-1213 on a weekday between 8:00 and 7:00. Starting online through a my Social Security account works for some claims. If you prefer in person, an appointment is now required and ssa.gov/locator has the current offices. We leave the addresses to Social Security, since theirs is the only list that is right on the day you read it.

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 closer but no longer accepts new interments.

The VA states it plainly, so we will use its words. Included at no cost to the family: a gravesite where there is space, opening and closing of the grave, perpetual care, a Government headstone or marker, a burial flag, and a Presidential Memorial Certificate. Cremated remains are inurned “in the same manner and with the same honors as casketed remains.” Spouses and dependent children are eligible at no cost, sharing the veteran’s headstone rather than receiving a separate one. A surviving spouse who remarried after the veteran died is still eligible, and this is the detail families most often assume away. When the time comes, the National Cemetery Scheduling Office handles it on 1-800-535-1117. Fax the discharge paperwork to 1-866-900-6417 first.

Beyond the cemetery there is an allowance. A death not connected to service draws $1,002 for burial and $1,002 for a plot under the rates effective October 1, 2025, filed on Form 21P-530EZ within two years of the burial. The part that catches people: use a national cemetery and the plot allowance does not apply, there being no plot to pay for. One or the other. The VA benefits line is 1-800-827-1000.

Veterans have a county route that non-veterans do not. The King County Veterans Program, at 206-263-8387, can help with burial costs. A single day of service qualifies, discharge type does not matter, and the veteran’s family members are covered as well, though some help is income tested. The offices are at 645 Andover Park West in Tukwila and 9725 3rd Avenue NE in Seattle. If the answer is no, point them at RCW 73.08.070, which obliges the county to bear the cost for an indigent veteran or their family member.

For an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe, start with the tribe itself. In this area that means the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe in Auburn at (253) 876-3141, the Snoqualmie Indian Tribe at (425) 888-6551 option 3, the Puyallup Tribe of Indians at (253) 573-7849, the Suquamish Tribe at (360) 394-8437, or the Tulalip Tribes at 360-716-4300. Bureau of Indian Affairs burial assistance of up to $3,500 is available to indigent enrolled members through the Puget Sound Agency in Everett, 425-622-9158. And to state it plainly: the Duwamish Tribe is not federally recognized and federal tribal benefits do not flow through it.

Rarely mentioned and worth thousands: Washington covers funeral expenses in homicide cases. Labor and Industries runs the Crime Victims Compensation Program, which pays up to $7,990 toward funeral and burial and funds grief counseling for immediate family. The crime must have been reported to law enforcement and the claim filed within three years of that report. The line is 1-800-762-3716.

The last resort is a real one and it is worth knowing before you borrow. King County’s Indigent Remains Program, run out of the Medical Examiner’s Office, pays for cremation where someone dies in the county without means or claiming family. Expect about ninety days and a review of both next of kin and finances. No income threshold is published. Call 206-731-3232, extension 5. RCW 36.39.030 is what obliges the county to provide it.

One thing a Renton family should hear plainly. People cremated through the county’s indigent program are interred in individual containers in shared plots at Mount Olivet Cemetery on Blaine Avenue NE, here in Renton, with a public ceremony held periodically. If you have been trying to find where a relative went after a county cremation, that is very often the answer, and the Medical Examiner’s office can confirm it.

If none of these apply, tell us before you make any decision about money. That conversation costs nothing and it fairly often turns something up.