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Military Funeral Honors: the State Pays the Detail up to $100 — and the Family May Not Be Charged

Kentucky pays a stipend of up to $100 per ceremony to the burial honor guard detail supplied by a veterans’ service organisation, on a published scale that rises with what is actually rendered. An organisation claiming the stipend may not take an honorarium, a donation or any other payment from the funeral home or the family for those honours.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

Kentucky pays a stipend of up to $100 per ceremony to the burial honor guard detail supplied by a veterans’ service organisation, on a published scale that rises with what is actually rendered. An organisation claiming the stipend may not take an honorarium, a donation or any other payment from the funeral home or the family for those honours.

What it's worth: Up to $100 per ceremony paid by the state to the honor guard detail, and no charge to the family for it

  • The stipend is paid to the honor guard detail supplied by the authorised provider, not to the family. What the family gets is the honours themselves, and a bar on being billed for them.
  • The scale is per ceremony and pays for what is actually rendered: nothing for "Taps" on a recording, $15 for a live or ceremonial bugler, $30 for flag folding with recorded "Taps", $50 for flag folding with a live bugler, $80 for flag folding with a rifle team on a recording, and $100 for flag folding with a rifle team and a live bugler.
  • A rifle team means a minimum of three firers under the regulation.

Who is entitled to it

  • The honours are rendered for the veteran; the family arranges and receives them.
  • Your discharge meets the regulation’s test.
  • You are in this state.

Not sure whether that describes you?

Answer a few questions about this benefit specifically — we only ask what this one actually depends on, and we stop as soon as we know.

How to claim it

Deadline: After each rendering of military burial honours
  1. 1Ask the funeral director to arrange honours through a veterans’ service organisation, and ask whether that organisation claims the state stipend. If it does, Section 4(3) forbids it taking an honorarium, a donation or any other payment from the funeral home or from you for those honours.
  2. 2Know the scale before agreeing to anything, because it tells you what is on offer. A rifle team with a live bugler sits at the top of the schedule at $100; a recording of "Taps" alone attracts nothing at all.
  3. 3Have the DD Form 214 or the NGB Form 22 to hand. The regulation requires the organisation to verify the service from one of those two documents before it can claim.
  4. 4The flag must be presented to the next of kin or family representative by a member of the veteran’s own service — the regulation lists the Marine Corps, Army, Air Force, Space Force, Navy and Coast Guard — and a flag folding ceremony is required as part of the honours.
  5. 5Eligibility is wider than "veteran". Someone honorably serving in the Reserves or in the Air or Army National Guard at the time of death qualifies, and so does a person previously interred or cremated regardless of the date of death — which makes honours claimable for a burial long past.
  6. 6A conviction for a federal or state capital offence disqualifies, on both limbs of the eligibility test.
  7. 7If a local organisation says it has no detail to send, the programme contact is published in the regulation itself: the State Cemeteries Director at the department, on (502) 782-5721.
Form
KDVA Form, "Veterans’ Service Organization Request for Honors Stipend", 09/24 — filed by the organisation, not by the family
File with
Kentucky Department of Veterans’ Affairs
Documents you will need
dd214
No renewal
Once granted it does not need renewing.
CorrectionThe figure repeated in most write-ups of this programme is a $60 maximum, on a scale topping out at $60 for a rifle team with a live bugler. That is the superseded schedule, and an automated read of the regulation page still returns it. The text in force since 18 November 2024 caps the stipend at $100 and pays $15, $30, $50, $80 and $100 up the scale. A family or an organisation budgeting against $60 is working from the old law.
CorrectionThis is not money the family receives, and it should not appear as a line on a funeral invoice. Section 4(3) makes it a condition of the stipend that the organisation does not receive an honorarium, donation or other payment from the funeral home or the veteran’s family for the honours provided. Honours being billed to you by an organisation that also claims the state stipend is worth raising with the department.
Worth knowingThe reason the programme exists is written into KRS 40.360(1), and it is unusually candid for a statute: Department of Defense data for 2000 showed over 497,000 veterans died against only 91,074 military funeral honours performed. The state built the stipend to close that gap through the service organisations rather than through military units.
Known gapThe regulation incorporates the claim form by reference and points at veterans.ky.gov for a copy. That host is edge-blocked from here, so the form itself was not read and no filing deadline, processing time or annual cap on stipends is claimed. Nothing in the regulation text sets one.

Sources

This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.