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Ecclesiastical Case Reports
Re Strood Cemetery
(Rochester Consistory Court: Goodman Ch, January 2005)
Exhumation of cremated remains - de minimis
Mrs A had reserved a burial plot for herself in the consecrated part of the municipal cemetery in 1958. Since that time her first husband and the ashes of two sons-in-law had been buried in the grave. At the time of the subsequent burials it had been Mrs A's wish to be cremated after her death and for her remains to be interred in the top of the grave with her sons-in-law. She had now changed her mind. Mrs A's daughter and grand-daughter sought a faculty for the exhumation of the cremated remains after Mrs A's death and the placing of the remains in her coffin, which would be buried in the grave in question. The chancellor questioned whether it would be practical and seemly allow the petition. He also questioned whether he could grant a faculty to enable something that would happen only after Mrs A's death and when she could not be a petitioner. The chancellor found that the faculty could be granted to the petitioners with the assent of Mrs A but noted that such a faculty would be permissive rather than binding. The chancellor found that enabling family members' remains to be kept together was sufficient grounds to rebut the presumption against exhumation. Moreover, had the petition not included the plan to remove the cremated remains and place them in A's coffin (after her death) he considered that a faculty would not be necessary - the partial displacement within a grave of previously buried remains being de minimis when preparing for a subsequent burial in the same plot, even if the displaced remains need to be laid on the surface prior to reburial. In this case, the remains would, for practical purposes, have to be removed from the cemetery to be placed in Mrs A's coffin. The petitioners, with the assent of Mrs A, modified their petition and a faculty was granted for the cremated remains to be removed, the grave dug and the cremated remains replaced in the grave on top or at the side of the coffin prior to the grave being filled in. The possibility that the cremated remains would need to be put in new caskets and possibly stored overnight in the cemetery chapel (if the grave needed to be dug the previous day) meant that the request was not de minimis and a faculty was required.
[WA]
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