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Memorial Cemetery System — Burial Without Charge, But Not the Headstone or the Vault
An eligible veteran who asks for burial in the state cemetery system must be allowed earth burial, and every burial is without charge. Eligible dependants may be buried in the same grave or adjacent to it, also without charge. Headstones and vaults are not provided at state expense.
Verified August 22, 2026
What this benefit is
An eligible veteran who asks for burial in the state cemetery system must be allowed earth burial, and every burial is without charge. Eligible dependants may be buried in the same grave or adjacent to it, also without charge. Headstones and vaults are not provided at state expense.
What it's worth: Grave site, opening and closing, and perpetual maintenance at no charge — headstone and vault excluded
- The statute states exactly what the State takes on and no more: furnishing a grave site, opening and closing the grave, and maintaining the grave and the cemeteries in perpetuity. Nothing else is promised.
- No dollar figure is claimed. The saving is whatever a plot and interment would have cost privately, which the State does not publish.
Who is entitled to it
- The right to burial runs to the eligible veteran.
- A spouse, surviving spouse or qualifying child is an eligible dependant.
- Your discharge is honorable or general under honorable conditions.
- 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
- 1Check the service-length rule first, because it catches people out. Anyone who served as an ENLISTED person after 7 September 1980, or as an OFFICER after 16 October 1981, must have served a minimum of 24 continuous months or the full period they were called up for. Earlier service carries no such minimum.
- 2Budget for the headstone and the vault. The statute says in terms that headstones and vaults are not provided at state expense, even though the marker itself is the pattern the federal National Cemetery Administration furnishes, and every casket in a non-green section must sit in a permanent vault meeting federal specifications.
- 3A green burial section exists and changes what you must buy: no embalming fluids, a shroud of natural biodegradable fabric, and the decedent strapped to a wooden board or placed in a wicker casket or a wooden casket assembled with dowels and containing no metal.
- 4Get the intention in writing while both people are alive. A dependant may be buried in the same grave or adjacent without charge only if the survivor’s intention was written down — the veteran writes it if the dependant dies first, and the dependants write it if the veteran dies first.
- 5The veteran need not be buried there for the spouse to be. A spouse or surviving spouse is an eligible dependant even if the veteran is not buried or memorialised in the system, and a surviving spouse who later remarried a non-veteran stays eligible where the death occurred on or after 1 January 2000.
- 6Reinterment from another cemetery is allowed on request, as long as the State bears no cost beyond what an original burial would have cost.
- 7Certain convictions bar interment entirely — murder, a crime punishable elsewhere by life or death, and named Class A, B and C offences and lifetime sex offender registration. The bar applies even where there was no conviction because the person died or fled, on a federal finding by clear and convincing evidence.
- Form
- Pre-need eligibility determination, then the burial arrangement itself
- File with
- Bureau of Maine Veterans' Services, cemetery system
- Documents you will need
- dd214
- No renewal
- Once granted it does not need renewing.
Correction"Free burial in the state veterans cemetery" is the usual summary and it is half right. Burial is without charge, but §504(3)(C) says plainly that headstones and vaults are not provided at state expense — and in a non-green section the vault is mandatory and must meet federal pressure specifications. Families budget for nothing and then meet a bill.
Worth knowingThe National Guard route is narrower than the active-service one: it covers a person who served in the state National Guard and DIED as a result of injury, disease or illness sustained on active state service. Guard service alone does not open the statutory right, though a separate discretionary route at §504(4)(B-1) lets the director admit Guard, reserve and ROTC members and their spouses or minor children under departmental rules.
Worth knowingInterment is permanent and final. The director may allow disinterment only where there is no cost to the State.
Worth knowingVolunteers may place flags on graves from two days before the observed Memorial Day until three days after, with a limited extension if the weather is bad, funded by a dedicated flag placement fund.
Known gapThe number and location of the cemeteries, current opening arrangements, and the departmental rules governing the discretionary Guard and reserve route were not read this session — the bureau’s own cemetery pages could not be reached.
Sources
- authority · statute37-B M.R.S. §504 — Maine Veterans' Memorial Cemetery System
- operating · statute37-B M.R.S. §507(5) — Authority to receive federal funds: the state cemetery grants program
This finder provides an informational match, not a government eligibility determination. The responsible agency decides your application.