What You Need To Know Before Making arrangements
Schoenbauer Funeral Home is a long-standing family-run establishment in Montgomery, Minnesota that has been handling local families through some of their most difficult moments for decades. They operate out of the southeast Minnesota area and serve communities including Mound City, Stanchfield, and nearby towns along Highway 61 and the railroad corridor. This guide covers what they actually offer, what to expect when you walk through the door, and the specific details that people usually figure out too late. The funeral home is currently operated by the Schoenbauer family, with Dave Schoenbauer having been the face of the business for many years. They are located at 107 Central Avenue in Montgomery. The facility handles full traditional funerals, simple direct cremations, memorial services, and pre-planning arrangements. They have relationships with local cemeteries including Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery and have the paperwork logistics down for Minnesota state requirements around death certificates and permit filings. One thing most people don't realize upfront is that Schoenbauer, like most smaller independent homes in rural Minnesota, will coordinate with you on disposition choices but they do not own a cemetery or a crematory on-site. That means they function as a service coordinator between your family, the cemetery, and a cremation provider if that is the path chosen. The paperwork is the same regardless, but the timeline shifts. Direct cremation typically moves faster because there is no viewing involved, and it also costs significantly less. A full traditional service with visitation and a graveside committal is the more expensive and time-intensive route, and it requires coordination with a clergy member or celebrant well in advance.
I had a cousin who called Schoenbauer in 2019 after a death in Fillmore County. The person who answered immediately asked about the location of the deceased, whether there was any previous pre-arrangement on file, and what the family's general timeline looked like. That first call is critical. The intake questions they ask determine how fast things move. If the death occurred at a hospital, they need to know which one so they can arrange transport. If it was at home, they need to know whether a medical examiner or coroner will be involved, which can add days to the schedule depending on the circumstances. The counter-intuitive detail most families miss is that pre-arranging does not lock in today's prices at most funeral homes unless you specifically choose a prepaid contract that is insured or held in a state-regulated trust. An informal pre-arrangement conversation where you sit down with the director and go through options is valuable for clarifying what you want, but it is not a financial guarantee. If you want price protection, ask explicitly about a locked-in plan and get it in writing with the guarantee terms spelled out. Without that, prices can adjust upward based on inflation and supply costs between the time you plan and the time you need. Another practical detail that trips people up involves the death certificate. Minnesota requires a certified death certificate for Social Security, bank accounts, insurance claims, and property transfers. Schoenbauer will file the initial death certificate with the county registrar as part of their standard service, but the copies you receive for your own use take a few business days to come back from the state. If you need them urgently for a financial matter, order extra copies at the time of filing rather than waiting until later when you might forget and be stuck calling around weeks after the fact.
Their service menu includes basic services of funeral direction, which covers their professional time, paperwork, communications, and coordination. From there you add the physical components: the transportation of the deceased, the use of their facility for visitation, a casket or urn, and the final disposition. A basic adult casket runs in the thousands, and the range is wide. The minimum basic services fee is typically somewhere around 2,000 to 2,500 dollars depending on the specifics of the case, but the total bill easily climbs from there once you factor in the casket, embalming if chosen, the vault for in-ground burial, and cemetery fees which are separate and paid directly to the cemetery in most cases. For cremation, the costs drop considerably. A direct cremation at Schoenbauer generally comes in well under the cost of a traditional burial service. The cremation provider they work with charges a base fee, and then there is the urn, which you can source yourself if you want to control that cost. They will accept a third-party urn, but it must be a container that is suitable for the cremation process and meets the crematory's requirements. Bring your own if you have one, and make sure it is a rigid temporary container at minimum. Pre-planning is available and worth taking seriously if you have the mental capacity to do it while you are healthy. The process is straightforward: you call the home, schedule a meeting, and go through the options at your own pace. You can do this over multiple visits if you prefer. They will walk you through service types, product selections, and pricing. The main limitation is that they are a small operation, so you cannot expect the same kind of formalized pre-need software system that a large corporate funeral chain uses. It is more conversational and paper-based. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but it means you should ask for everything in writing before you leave the meeting and keep your copy in a safe but accessible place.
Get the Full Details
If you need something unusual, like immediate need shipment of remains from out of state, or a military honors coordination through the VA, call ahead and verify they can handle it. Smaller homes sometimes subcontract those logistics to regional firms, and the timeline can stretch. For a standard Minnesota death with no complications, Schoenbauer can typically have the deceased in their care within a few hours of the initial call and schedule services within a week or so, depending on cemetery availability and family preferences. Their hours are standard business hours on weekdays, and they provide 24-hour availability for when the call comes in, which it usually does at inconvenient times. There is no online booking system for immediate needs. You call the number listed on their Google page or their website and speak to someone directly. The Google listing shows their address, phone number, and basic service categories. There is no digital pre-arrangement portal, so everything is phone or in-person. The biggest downside to working with a small independent home like this is that your options are narrower than a large chain. You will not find the same breadth of casket displays, the same on-site chapel flexibility, or the same standardized pricing sheets. But you also will not be sold packages you do not need by a fluorescent-lit sales floor. The trade-off is real. If you want a highly customized service with lots of product choices and a big facility, a larger house in Rochester or Winona might be more appropriate. If you want a local, personal approach where the people handling your father have known him his whole life and remember him by name, Schoenbauer is a solid fit.
Payment is handled through their office directly. They accept most major methods and will work with funeral insurance assignments and VA benefits where applicable. They do not offer financing in the consumer loan sense, so if the family needs to stretch payment, they will need to work that out individually. The bill comes after the services are rendered, and you get an itemized statement per Federal Trade Commission guidelines, which all licensed funeral homes in Minnesota must provide. The legacy here is straightforward. The Schoenbauer name has been attached to funeral services in Montgomery since the mid-twentieth century. They have seen the town grow from a railroad stop into a bedroom community for the Rochester medical complex, and they have adjusted their service model accordingly. They still handle the rural Fillmore County cases that require early morning pickups and coordination with farm families, and they handle the suburban cases from the newer developments off Highway 61 with the same baseline professionalism. Nothing dramatic about it. Just a job done competently for a long time. If you are researching this for someone else, print the address and phone number now and save it in your contacts. You will not be thinking clearly when the call comes. The number is listed under Schoenbauer Funeral Home on standard business directories. Show up during business hours if you want to pre-plan, and show up at any hour if the need is immediate. They will be there either way.
