Families with loved ones buried at Mount Tamalpais Mortuary and Cemetery in San Rafael have spent a decade watching the 150-year-old grounds fall apart — toppled headstones, rodent holes, weeds swallowing grave markers, and paths gone to ruin. Now, after state regulators seized tens of millions of dollars meant to maintain the cemetery and lawmakers considered legislation addressing its problems, Marin County appears close to finally taking it over.
The Marin Independent Journal reported concerns involving Mount Tamalpais. Plot owners have reported tilting or toppled headstones, rodent holes, poor road and path maintenance, animal feces, and tall weeds obscuring grave markers, according to the same report. The cemetery sits on land where Dr. Henry A. DuBois Jr. founded the site in August 1879 after a San Rafael ordinance banned burials within town limits — surveying more than 40 cemeteries nationwide before laying it out, according to Wikipedia. The property now holds many graves.
A $52 Million Seizure and a Pattern of Neglect
The California Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, part of the state Department of Consumer Affairs, ordered Mount Tamalpais and three other memorial sites under the same ownership to cease conducting cemetery business in March 2025, per the Marin Independent Journal's reporting. Regulators seized $52 million in endowment care funds reserved for the four cemeteries, and owner Buck Kamphausen was disciplined for allegedly failing to file mandatory yearly reports, mismanaging those funds, and failing to properly maintain the grounds, the paper reported. A Solano County Superior Court judge had separately found in January 2025 that Kamphausen's continued management of the endowment funds was hazardous to plot holders, authorizing the state to seize control of more than $50 million in trust assets across the four sites, according to the Vallejo Sun.
Court documents and state records showed that more than $1 million in uninsured solid gold and 15 real estate properties in Vallejo were among the assets tied to the cemetery businesses, the Vallejo Sun reported. Per the Marin Independent Journal, the case involved allegations of misuse of endowment care funds, personal expenditures and uninvested funds, according to the court ruling. Mount Tamalpais was one of four cemeteries under Evergreen Ministries.
An Owner Tried to Dodge Oversight, Then Offered to Walk Away
Before the court's seizure order, Kamphausen had attempted to transfer the $50 million in trust assets and donate the cemeteries to Evergreen Ministries — a religious nonprofit he founded in June 2022 — in a bid to place the properties outside state regulatory jurisdiction, according to KQED. More than 1,000 plots at Mount Tamalpais belong to members of Congregation Kol Shofar, a Tiburon synagogue whose leaders took part in court proceedings to block that transfer, KQED reported.
Now, a possible handover of the cemetery is under discussion. The pending legislation would address such a transfer.
Two Bills Built for This Exact Moment
Assembly Bill 929 would authorize Marin County to transfer ownership of the San Rafael cemetery to a state-licensed nonprofit or other cemetery business, and it temporarily shields the new operator from prior liabilities through 2029, according to LegiScan's bill text.
Alongside it, Senate Bill 1312 would allow cities and counties to define certain endowment care cemeteries as abandoned under specified conditions and authorize them to transfer care and management to a California nonprofit. The bill was amended June 18, 2026, and authorizes transfers to nonprofit, business, or governmental entities. The bill also addresses when a cemetery may be considered abandoned. Both bills would exempt successors from liability for prior owners' debts, obligations, taxes, fines and judgments, though they would exclude burial rights and prepaid burial contracts from that exemption. Both measures now await Governor Gavin Newsom's signature.
An Earlier Bill That Marin County Fought
The path to AB 929 and SB 1312 ran through an earlier proposal that Marin County opposed. That proposal was not enacted in its original form.
The San Rafael cemetery requires restoration, ongoing maintenance, and stabilization of conditions on the grounds.
A Statewide Problem, Not Just a San Rafael One
The Marin Independent Journal's reporting on Mount Tamalpais describes the cemetery's maintenance problems. That financial pressure lines up with a broader shift in how Californians handle end-of-life arrangements: the state's cremation rate reached roughly 66% as of 2025, according to Parting Stone, as high land costs and changing cultural habits push families away from traditional full-body burials. The article also considers national cremation trends.
Kamphausen's regulatory troubles extend well beyond the cemetery portfolio. State records show enforcement involving Kamphausen and Voss.
For now, the fate of Mount Tamalpais rests on the governor's desk and on Marin County's ability to line up a qualified nonprofit or licensed cemetery operator willing to take on 24,000 graves and a century and a half of deferred maintenance. Families who've waited years for someone to mow the weeds and right the fallen headstones are, for the first time in a long while, watching lawmakers actually move.
