Last-resort assistance for funeral expenses in Québec

Sometimes a person dies without leaving enough to pay for their own funeral. It is not rare, and it is nothing to be ashamed of: an empty bank account, a rented apartment, a few pieces of furniture, and a funeral bill that arrives within the week.

Québec provides assistance in that situation. It is called the special benefit for funeral expenses, it is paid by the Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale, Québec's employment and social solidarity department, and its maximum amount is $2,500. It is better to know how it works before you need it, because its calculation rules hold a few surprises.

First: who has to pay

Before talking about public assistance, you need to know who the bill falls on.

Revenu Québec puts it simply in its documentation on unclaimed successions: funeral expenses form part of the charges of the succession and can be claimed by the person who paid them. So it is the deceased's patrimony that bears them, and it is up to the liquidator — Québec's term for what the rest of Canada calls an executor — to settle them.

In practice, someone almost always fronts the money — a child, a sister, a spouse — and is reimbursed later, if the succession can afford it. When it cannot, that advance never comes back. That is exactly the hole the special benefit is meant to fill.

The special benefit for funeral expenses

According to Québec.ca, the special benefit for funeral expenses may be granted to someone who has paid or has undertaken to pay the funeral expenses on a person's death. It is granted if the deceased did not have the financial resources needed to pay their funeral expenses. Its maximum amount is $2,500, and it reimburses the expenses in whole or in part.

One clarification matters, because it clears away a stubborn misconception: it is not necessary for the deceased to have received benefits under the Social Assistance Program or the Social Solidarity Program. A worker who never drew a dollar of social assistance, but who dies without assets, can open the door to the benefit. What counts is the lack of resources at the time of death, not the status of benefit recipient.

The form differs depending on the case. If the deceased was receiving last-resort financial assistance, it is the Demande de paiement de frais funéraires form (application for payment of funeral expenses, SR-0006F). Otherwise, it is the Demande de remboursement de frais funéraires pour un adulte seul non prestataire d'une aide financière de dernier recours (application for reimbursement of funeral expenses for a single adult who is not receiving last-resort financial assistance, form 3005). In both cases, you go to a Services Québec office.

You have to go through Retraite Québec first

This is the step families skip, and it is mandatory.

Québec.ca is explicit: before applying for the special benefit for funeral expenses, the person must first check whether they are entitled to the death benefit, by filing an application with Retraite Québec. If the deceased contributed enough to the Québec Pension Plan, it is the QPP death benefit that will be paid, instead of the special benefit.

The two programs therefore do not add up. They also cap at the same amount: $2,500 according to Retraite Québec for the death benefit, $2,500 according to Québec.ca for the special benefit. The difference lies in the entry point — QPP contributions on one side, absence of resources on the other.

How the amount is calculated

The special benefit is not a flat cheque. It is a calculation, and Québec.ca publishes its components. The benefit is calculated on the basis of:

• the person's liquid assets at the time of their death;
• the value of their property, after deduction of their debts, on the day of their death;
• the proceeds of any life insurance forming part of their succession;
• the amount of any prearranged funeral services contract;
• the amount of any advance burial purchase contract.

Québec.ca adds a condition on the last two items: the initial value of those contracts, in total, must not exceed $12,000.

Put another way, the State looks at what the deceased left behind before topping up. A small amount of savings, a car, an already-paid prearranged funeral: all of it reduces the assistance by the same amount.

The line to read twice: "forming part of their succession"

The third item on the list is worth pausing on, because the wording is precise.

What enters the calculation is the proceeds of life insurance forming part of their succession. Yet on another of its pages, Québec.ca states that life insurance is excluded from the succession when a beneficiary has been expressly designated in the policy, and that the proceeds are then paid to that beneficiary independently of acceptance of the succession.

The two texts read together. Life insurance proceeds that go directly to a designated beneficiary are not in the succession; proceeds payable "to the succession," for lack of a designated beneficiary or because the beneficiary has died, are. That distinction changes a great deal at death — for creditors, for tax, and here for the calculation of public assistance.

A caution is nonetheless in order: it is the Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale that analyzes each file under the Loi sur l'aide aux personnes et aux familles (Québec's individual and family assistance act) and its regulation. The government pages describe the framework; they do not replace the decision rendered on a specific file.

Reimbursement to a parent for a child's funeral expenses

A separate component exists for parents. According to Québec.ca, for a parent to be entitled to a reimbursement, the child must have been either stillborn or have died while not in the parent's care — for example if the child was housed in a hospital centre, or taken in charge by an intermediate resource, a foster family or a tutor. The parent, for their part, must be receiving social assistance or social solidarity benefits.

The 90-day deadline

This is the easiest constraint to miss, during a period when nobody has their mind on forms.

Québec.ca states it unambiguously: the application must be submitted within 90 days of the date the services were provided. Three months after the funeral, the door closes.

That deadline is shorter than the QPP's, where Retraite Québec gives 60 days' priority to the person who paid the funeral expenses, then leaves a five-year window to file an application. The two plans do not run at the same pace, and it is the shorter one that governs.

When nobody claims the succession

There is one further scenario beyond all this: the person dies with no known heir, or all the successors renounce. The succession then becomes unclaimed and it is Revenu Québec that liquidates it.

The person who paid for the funeral can file a claim there, with supporting documents. Revenu Québec publishes the list of eligible expenses: transport and embalming of the body, coffin, urn and niche, viewing at the funeral home, religious or non-religious funeral service, burial or cremation, the funeral director's fees, publication of death notices, cemetery plot and monument in proportion to the expenses incurred for the deceased, telephone charges incurred to reach the immediate family, thank-you cards and memorial bookmarks, and the taxes related to those expenses.

Two warnings from Revenu Québec are worth remembering. No claim can be paid before a full inventory is drawn up, notice is given to the interested parties and a payment proposal is approved by the court — so several months can go by. And the amount of the expenses claimed against the succession will be deducted, if applicable, from the death benefit paid by Retraite Québec if the deceased was eligible for it.

The gap that remains

Let us bring the figures together. The maximum for the special benefit is $2,500 according to Québec.ca. The average cost of a funeral at a private funeral establishment in Québec comes to $5,700 according to the Fédération des coopératives funéraires du Québec, citing a survey by the Corporation des thanatologues du Québec; the Fédération puts the cost at a funeral cooperative at about $4,000, according to its executive director Alain Leclerc.

Even in the best case, then, public assistance covers less than half of an average private bill. And it only arrives after the death, after a check of resources, and on presentation of receipts.

That is why many people prefer to settle this question while they are alive, through dedicated savings, a prearrangement contract or life insurance paid to a designated beneficiary. This last route has a feature the other two do not: the sum goes to a named person, outside the succession, and it can be used for something other than the funeral if the family decides so. Depending on the insurer and the situation, some products do not call for a medical exam, and criteria vary from one insurer to another.

Sources

• Gouvernement du Québec, « Frais funéraires » (special benefit for funeral expenses), page updated February 23, 2024 : https://www.quebec.ca/famille-et-soutien-aux-personnes/aide-sociale-et-solidarite-sociale/prestations-de-base/frais-funeraires (accessed August 10, 2026)
• Gouvernement du Québec, « Assurance vie du défunt » : https://www.quebec.ca/justice-et-etat-civil/testament-succession/testament/avant/assurance-vie-defunt (accessed August 10, 2026)
• Revenu Québec, « Successions non réclamées — Frais et réclamations » : https://www.revenuquebec.ca/fr/biens-non-reclames/sinformer/successions-non-reclamees/frais-et-reclamations/ (accessed August 10, 2026)
• Retraite Québec, « La prestation de décès » : https://www.retraitequebec.gouv.qc.ca/fr/citoyens/deces/rentes-et-prestations-conjoints-enfants-et-heritiers/prestation-deces (accessed August 10, 2026)
• Fédération des coopératives funéraires du Québec, « Combien ça coûte mourir? » : https://fcfq.coop/blog/nouvelles-6/combien-ca-coute-mourir-4166 (accessed August 10, 2026)
• LégisQuébec, Loi sur l'aide aux personnes et aux familles, RLRQ c. A-13.1.1 : https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/fr/document/lc/A-13.1.1 (accessed August 10, 2026)