Benjamin Franklin long ago pegged death and taxes as the only certainties in life. He never made any promises about what happens after death.

Some cemeteries are having problems keeping the implicit promise made to the dead and their families, that their gravesites will be maintained long after they are gone. With more people choosing cremation over more expensive traditional internments, and with families drifting ever farther from their hometowns, many cemeteries are struggling to find the money to keep operating. Some cemeteries are flirting with death.

The theory is that through perpetual care funds “you’ll build up enough funds to maintain the cemetery,” said Richard Fishman, director of New York State Division of Cemeteries. “That’s a nice theory, but my experience in 15 years is that not many cemeteries have enough money in those funds.”

The upshot is that cemeteries that find themselves in default will either end up being taken over by willing local governments, or overrun by nature as care is abandoned. Industry officials said national figures are not compiled, but Fishman has seen an uptick in the number of New York cemeteries requiring government intervention. In 2009, the state transferred 15 cemeteries from private control to local governments, up from 10 in 2008, which was around the annual average for the previous 30 years.

Highland Park Cemetery, in Alexandria, N.Y., ran out of money and support in 2009. The town took over maintenance. (Photo courtesy of Martha Millett)

Highland Park Cemetery could’ve been such a victim. It was once run by an active board of 10 townspeople from Alexandria, N.Y., a responsibility passed down over the years. Collectively, they balanced the checkbook, managed the landscapers and executed any other task vital to the upkeep of the 2.2-acre cemetery. By 2009, those 10 had dwindled to two, a funeral director and his wife, both in their late 70s. They simply couldn’t do it anymore.

“It died of natural causes,” said the funeral director, whose wife asked that they not be identified. When they gave up, there was no one to take over the private cemetery that had been around for as long as they could remember.

Some officials say the real problem is a lack of concern from younger generations who don’t value cemeteries the way previous generations did.

“They don’t have respect for what the elders stood for. That all went out with the dishwater,” said Martha Millett, Alexandria’s town supervisor. Alexandria assumed control of Highland Park, the seventh cemetery the town has adopted, and Millett oversees maintenance.

“By Memorial Day, they have to be picture perfect,” she said. Highland Park Cemetery had approximately $9,000 in its maintenance fund when the town took over. Millett said that the additional expenses to the town are “not unbearable.”

There’s more at work than a perceived lack of respect, though. The nature of the American family, where and how it lives, has transformed over the decades. Sean O’Regan, vice president of cemetery services at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., pointed to “big changes in society. I remember when grandparents lived across the street. Aunts and uncles were around the corner. That dynamic is breaking up. There’s a shift in the family dynamic.”

With families so spread out, the support base for cemeteries is often fragile. This isn’t a problem for O’Regan and Mount Auburn Cemetery, a national historic landmark. The cemetery also functions as an arboretum, drawing thousands of visitors a year, including a strong contingent of birders, and commands top dollar for burial spaces. Some resting places cost as much as $30,000. Along with the financial support from the community, Mount Auburn has an enormous endowment of about $120 million that O’Regan said guarantees the facility’s long-term care. But O’Regan worries about the smaller, less glamorous cemeteries. “The fees they charge are not in line. Their amounts are way too low,” he said. “It’s never going to get any better.”

All states require cemetery operators to reserve a portion of the fees they charge into a perpetual maintenance fund — usually 10 to 15 percent. “The amounts mandated by laws aren’t always enough,” said Bob Fells, the chief operating officer for the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association.

That’s especially true if the mandate came too late. Alabama enacted its law in 2002. “Some of the large cemeteries that we regulate, there wouldn’t be enough money to maintain it in a way that people expect,” said Mac Stagner of Montgomery, Ala., president of the North American Death Care Regulators Association. Each state handles cemetery neglect and abandonment in a different way.

Problem cases aren’t restricted to low-profile, small-town burial grounds. Oakwood Cemetery Annex in Montgomery is the final resting place of one of American music’s most revered musicians: Hank Williams. The state put the privately owned, for-profit cemetery into receivership when the facility’s owner died. No one in the owner’s family wanted to take over the business. There wasn’t enough money in the perpetual care fund to take care of the cemetery, so the state transferred responsibility to the city, which pays almost $4,000 a year maintaining it.

Perpetual care funds also aren’t growing as fast as cemetery operators once believed they would. A shift away from burials and toward cremation has been under way for years. In 1985, cremation accounted for about 15 percent of after-death choices. By 2009, the rate had increased to over 34 percent, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

Like any business facing new dynamics, cemeteries will have to get creative. In the early 1980s, historic Congressional Cemetery, located near Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., was on death’s doorstep. Prostitutes and drug dealers plied their trades among the 71 Congressional representatives and 19 senators buried inside the gates. Many of the local members of Christ Church, which owned the cemetery, had moved away.

A local with strong ties to Congress refused allow further decay. Jim Oliver, who worked on Capitol Hill, rallied other staffers who loved Congress — when such a thing was possible. These volunteers started small, cutting grass themselves and raising funds.

“They needed $600,000 and they held a bake sale that made $40. How on earth were they going to mow the grass?” said Cindy Hays, the cemetery’s executive director and an early volunteer. Of course, the cemetery’s location, just a couple of miles from the Longworth House Office Building, where the Ways and Means Committee doles out federal money, made it easier to secure funding for a trust.

The cemetery got creative in finding another pipeline of support: dogs. Local dog walkers have found the cemetery to be an ideal place to exercise their pooches. They pay $200 plus $50 per dog for the privilege of doing so on cemetery grounds. Total canine revenue for 2010 so far: $140,000.

But not every cemetery can count on being saved by dogs. Some simply hope that communities will be reminded of how important cemeteries can be to their heritage.

“If the community’s consciousness is raised, people will step up,” said Richard Moylan, president of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y. When asked how to raise that awareness, though, he didn’t have any quick, easy answers. “It’s frightening,” Moylan said. “It’s a real situation.”