Interment service entitled to 20% senior discount – SC

MANILA, Philippines —  The Supreme Court (SC) has ruled that interment services are to be covered by the 20 percent discount on funeral and burial expenses provided by the Senior Citizens Act and its amending laws.

The decision, made public yesterday, grants a petition for review on certiorari filed by the government, which sought to set aside the rulings of a Cagayan de Oro City Regional Trial Court that excluded interment services from the coverage of the senior citizen discount on funeral and burial services.

Pryce Corp. Inc., a company that sells memorial lots and offers interment services, earlier won before the Cagayan de Oro court a special civil action for declaratory relief against the entitlement of interment services to a 20 percent discount under the Senior Citizens Act or Republic Act No. 7432.

In the case, the corporation argued that interment services were not among the services entitled to the discount provided under the Senior Citizens Act.

The RTC sided with Pryce Corp., citing the Implementing Rules and Regulations of RA 9994, or the Expanded Senior Citizens Act of 2010, which only mentions the services of purchasing a casket or urn, embalming, hospital morgue, and transportation of the body to the intended burial site.

It concluded that the digging of land for the grave of the deceased, concreting of the gravesite, and other services done during the actual burial were not subject to the 20 percent Senior Citizens Act discount.

Associate Justice Rodil Zalameda, who penned the decision, emphasized that the Senior Citizens Act is a law created to grant a bundle of benefits in favor of senior citizens or those at least 60 years old, giving flesh to the declared policy of motivating senior citizens to contribute to nation-building and encouraging their families and communities to reaffirm the Filipino tradition of caring for senior citizens.

The SC explained that both RA 9257 and RA 9994, in amending RA 7432, do not provide an exact definition of the term “funeral and burial services,” nor do they limit the scope of the services falling under “funeral and burial services.”

It also stressed that based on the definition of the term “burial” as commonly understood, “burial service” pertains to any service offered or provided in connection with the final disposition, entombment, or interment of human remains.

“The Court added that as pointed out by Justice Amy Lazaro-Javier in her Concurring Opinion that it would be unreasonable to infer that Congress intended to differentiate between the deceased’s final solace for the purpose of granting the 20 percent discount absent a clear legislative intent to the contrary,” a briefer by the SC on the decision reads.