Enroll in the DFS Travel Protection Plan

The moment your enrollment is confirmed, you are covered for the full cost and coordination of returning your remains home from anywhere in the world. That includes:

• Locating and engaging a licensed funeral home or embalming center near the place of death
• Transportation of the deceased from the place of death into professional care
• Preparation for transport — embalming, or direct cremation at the place of death if that is your family’s preference
• All shipping documentation, permits, and consular paperwork, including one certified death certificate
• An appropriate air-transport container meeting airline and international shipping requirements
• Air and ground transportation home
• Final delivery to your chosen local funeral home — or, for cremation, delivery of the cremated remains to your family

There is no per-mile charge, no distance cap inside the covered territory, and no bill sent to your family afterward. The costs that families are normally quoted at $8,000 to $15,000 and up are covered by your one-time enrollment fee.

1. Your enrollment is processed. Your details are registered with our repatriation network and your membership is recorded.
2. You receive your membership documents. Your confirmation, membership number, and the 24/7 assistance telephone number arrive by email immediately, along with instructions to log in to the network membership portal.  You may wish to note or print your ID # & contact details.  A Welcome Pack (including a plastic membership card) is mailed to you within 48 hours. This can be kept in your wallet, your glovebox, and/or with the person who would make the call.
3. Tell your family. The plan only works if someone knows to call. Give the assistance number to your spouse, your adult children, or whoever would be contacted first.
4. Travel. That is the whole plan. There is nothing to renew, nothing to re-file before a trip, and no trip itinerary to register.

Snowbirds. If you keep your legal residence in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, or anywhere in the Northeast and spend your winters in Florida, Arizona, or the Carolinas, you are the reason this plan exists. A death in your winter residence means your family is arranging interstate mortuary shipping from 1,200 miles away, while also arranging a funeral at home.

RV and road travelers. Extended cross-country trips put you hundreds of miles from home for months at a time, often in rural counties where the nearest funeral home with shipping capability is not close.

International travelers and cruise passengers. Repatriation from abroad is the most expensive and most bureaucratic scenario there is — foreign death registration, consular reporting, translated documentation, and airline cargo requirements that vary by carrier and country.

Retirees who visit family. Several states away for a month with the grandchildren is more than 75 miles from home, and it counts.

Adult children enrolling a parent. You can complete the enrollment form on behalf of a parent. Many families do.

Families are almost never prepared for this number. Domestic air transport of remains commonly runs $3,000 to $7,000 once you add preparation, the transport container, airline cargo fees, and receiving costs at both ends. International repatriation regularly exceeds $15,000, and in some countries considerably more.

Those costs land on your family in the first 48 hours after a death, at a moment when nobody is in a position to compare quotes or negotiate.

See real funeral shipping costs by destination →

This is the part most people are surprised by.

Repatriation coverage is usually sold as an add-on. You buy a prepaid funeral plan from a particular funeral home first, and travel protection is bolted on afterward — which means committing to one provider, in one town, for the funeral itself.

The DFS Travel Protection Plan is sold on its own. You enroll directly, you keep complete freedom over who handles the funeral and where it takes place, and you are not locked into any pre-need contract. Your family chooses the receiving funeral home when the time comes, and we deliver there.

If you already have a prepaid funeral plan, this plan sits alongside it without conflict. Most prepaid plans cover the funeral at home and do not cover getting you there.