burialstate

Four State Veterans’ Cemeteries — Nothing for the Veteran, $800 to Open a Spouse’s Grave

The board is required to establish and operate state veterans’ cemeteries. Four now operate: Fort Harrison, Missoula, Miles City and Columbia Falls. A Montana resident veteran is interred at no charge for a casket burial or an above-ground cremation, and the headstone is free to everyone. A spouse or dependant pays an $800 opening and closing fee on top of the setting fee — the single largest number on the schedule and the one families are not told about.

Verified August 23, 2026

What this benefit is

What it's worth: Plot, opening and closing, headstone and perpetual care at no charge for an eligible Montana resident veteran

The saving is what a plot, an interment and a marker would have cost commercially, which the state does not publish, so no total is claimed.
The published schedule is dated 8 April 2024 and says fees are subject to change. Treat every figure here as the last published one rather than as today’s price.
Cremation and casket are priced differently, and an out-of-state resident veteran pays roughly twice what a Montana resident does on the setting fee.

Who is entitled to it

The division states the bar as a discharge OTHER THAN DISHONORABLE, so an honorable or general discharge is inside it.
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

1Pick the cemetery. Four operate: the Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Fort Harrison, the Western Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Missoula, the Eastern Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Miles City, and the Northern Montana State Veterans Cemetery at Columbia Falls. Each has its own manager and you deal with that manager directly.
2Know what a veteran is charged, because it is close to nothing. On the division’s published schedule a Montana resident veteran pays $0 for an above-ground cremation and $50 for a casket burial or an in-memory-of marker; an in-ground cremation is $50 plus a $75 urn vault. The headstone or niche cover is free in every row of the schedule and opening and closing is free for the veteran.
3Budget for the spouse or dependant separately. Their opening and closing fee is $800, which makes an above-ground cremation $900, a casket burial $950 and an in-ground cremation $1,025. Nothing else on the schedule comes close to that number.
4An out-of-state resident veteran pays a higher setting fee — $100 above ground, $150 for a casket — but still no opening and closing charge.
5Guard and Reserve members who do not qualify as veterans can still be interred. The division says so in terms and points to the Burial Equity for Guards and Reserves Act; on the fee schedule that route is priced like an out-of-state veteran, with no opening and closing charge.
6The division states the eligible veteran test as three things: a discharge other than dishonorable, a sufficient number of years of service for the period served, and legible military discharge documentation. Length of service is the criterion people are caught by, not discharge, and §10-2-602 requires the board’s rules to address both.
7Only two documents and two forms are needed: a DD Form 214, NGB Form 22, DD Form 1300 or equivalent, and a death certificate; then the Application for Interment and a Headstone Inscription Request.
8Pre-register. The division publishes a pre-registration form, and eligibility verification by the cemetery manager is the slow step — settling it in advance takes it off the family in the days after a death.
9Casket vaults are not provided by the cemeteries and must be bought privately; urn vaults are required for in-ground cremation and can be bought through the cemetery for $75.
10A locally established veterans’ cemetery can become a state one. §10-2-601 allows designation where the legislature authorises it and the board certifies the cemetery operates under the same standards and interment eligibility criteria — worth checking if the nearest cemetery to you is a community one.
11Ask about the Corey Shea Act if the servicemember died on or after 7 October 2001 as a hostile casualty or from training-related injuries and left no spouse or child: their parents may be interred with them where the gravesite has space.
12The county interment allowance under §10-2-501 is a separate route and is not extinguished by this one. Where a veteran is buried outside a state cemetery, that allowance is the provision to look at.

Form: Application for Interment and Headstone Inscription Request; a Pre-Registration Form ahead of need
File with: The manager of the state veterans’ cemetery you choose, for the Montana Veterans Affairs Division
Documents you will need: dd214
No renewal: Once granted it does not need renewing.

CorrectionA state veterans’ cemetery is widely described as free for the veteran AND the spouse. In Montana it is not. The division’s own fee schedule charges a spouse or dependant an $800 opening and closing fee that a veteran is not charged, which turns a $100 cremation into a $900 one. A family planning on the strength of "no cost to the family" should read the schedule before the funeral director does.

CorrectionThe count is four operating, not three and not five. The Code names Fort William Henry Harrison, Missoula and Miles City and authorises Yellowstone County and Columbia Falls subject to funding; the division’s own cemetery pages show Columbia Falls open as the Northern Montana State Veterans Cemetery. Yellowstone County is still the one that has not materialised.

CorrectionThe eligibility terms are not in the Code, and reading them out of the statute would be inventing them. §10-2-601 establishes the cemeteries and §10-2-602 hands the criteria to the board’s rules; the three-part test recorded here comes from the division’s own pages, not from the section.

Worth knowingMontana lets Guard and Reserve members who do not meet veteran burial eligibility be interred anyway, under the Burial Equity for Guards and Reserves Act. The division describes this as something few states do, and it is decided by the cemetery manager rather than by a published rule.

Worth knowingThe money is ring-fenced twice over: the §10-2-603 account is statutorily appropriated to the department and may be used only for construction, maintenance, operation and administration of the cemeteries. Federal plot allowances paid on an interment flow into that account rather than to the family.

Known gapThe board’s interment eligibility rules — ARM title 34, chapter 5, subchapter 1 — could not be read this session. rules.mt.gov is now a client-rendered application whose rule pages return an empty document body, and its underlying data endpoints answered 403. So the length-of-service threshold, and the rule text behind the spouse and dependant eligibility the fee schedule prices, remain unverified at source. The published fee schedule is dated 8 April 2024 and states that fees are subject to change.

Sources

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