RYAN FUNERAL HOME CASE

INTRODUCTION

On a warm Chicago evening in August 2005, Regina Ryan leaned back in an overstuffed armchair in her brightly lit apartment above Ryan Funeral Home. Seventy-five years old and a widow, Regina smiled as she looked at the sons and daughters gathered before her: Maureen, Patrick, Sean, Brendan, Conner, and Siobhan.

Finally she spoke: “Your father was proud to own his own funeral home. He built this from nothing to what it is today. By serving local families so well, the name Ryan Funeral Home has come to mean compassion, integrity, and quality to those in this area. Reputation is everything in the funeral business.

“He’s gone now, and I must decide what’s to become of all this. I always thought it would be a simple decision: pass the business to the next generation.”

“It’s not so simple. The funeral industry has changed dramatically from what it was when we started out. It’s much harder to make a living than it once was. Nonetheless, I know that the reason your father started this business was because he wanted something to pass on to his children. This was to be his legacy.”

As her mother spoke, Maureen thought about how important the future of Ryan Funeral Home was to her personally. She was the only one of the six children who had become a funeral director, and she has worked alongside her father for eleven years. Maureen often met with families to make funeral arrangements when her father was busy elsewhere, and the local community had come to know her almost as well as they had known her father. Most of the families selecting Ryan Funeral Home did so because they knew they would be personally served by either Maureen or her father.

Maureen considered the fact that there were two parts to the business: the name Ryan Funeral Homes, and the tangible assets, chiefly the building and the land