GOODWILL

Many of the former owners and staff of our acquired funeral homes and certain cemeteries have provided high quality service to families for generations, which often represents a substantial portion of the value of a business. The excess of the purchase price over the fair value of identifiable net assets of funeral home businesses and cemeteries acquired is recorded as goodwill.

Our goodwill has an indefinite life and is not subject to amortization. As such, we test goodwill for impairment on an annual basis. Our intent is to perform a quantitative impairment test at least once every three years unless certain indicators or events suggest otherwise and perform a qualitative assessment during the remaining two years. Under current guidance, we are permitted to first assess qualitative factors to determine whether it is more-likely-than not that the fair value of a reporting unit is less than its carrying amount as a basis for determining whether it is necessary to perform a quantitative goodwill impairment test. For our 2019 annual impairment test, we performed a quantitative assessment and determined that there was no impairment to goodwill as the fair value of our reporting units was greater than the carrying value.

See Note 1 to the Consolidated Financial Statements included herein, for a discussion of the methodology used for our annual goodwill impairment test.

The following table presents changes in goodwill in the accompanying Consolidated Balance Sheet for the years ended December 31, 2018 and 2019 (in thousands):



	December 31, 2018			December 31, 2019
Goodwill at the beginning of year	$	287,956		$	303,887
Increase in goodwill related to acquisitions	16,777			99,344
Decrease in goodwill related to divestitures	—			(4,197		)
Decrease in goodwill related to impairments	(846		)	(742		)
Goodwill at the end of the year	$	303,887		$	398,292

During year ended December 31, 2019, we recognized $99.3 million in goodwill related to our acquisitions; $36.9 million was allocated to our cemetery segment and $62.4 million was allocated to our funeral home segment.

During year ended December 31, 2019, we sold a funeral home business with a $4.2 million carrying value of goodwill for a loss recorded in Other, net. See Note 5 to the Consolidated Financial Statements included herein, for a discussion of our divested businesses.

During year ended December 31, 2019, we also recorded a goodwill impairment of $0.5 million in Other, net, related to a funeral home business that we divested in the fourth quarter of 2019 and a $0.2 million goodwill impairment related to a funeral home business that is under a letter of intent to sell during 2020, as the carrying value exceeded fair value at December 31, 2019.

During the year ended December 31, 2018, we recorded an impairment of $0.8 million related to a funeral home business that we divested during the third quarter of 2019.