Exhumations

The petitioners' father's ashes had been interred in the cemetery in 2004 in a plot reserved for the ashes of him and his wife. Some years later, the petitioners' mother had decided that she did not wish her ashes to be buried with those of her husband, but wanted them scattered where she used to walk her dog. She had also expressed a wish that here husband's ashes be exhumed and scattered in the same place. The petitioners' mother died in 2023. The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty to allow the petitioners' father's ashes to be exhumed and scattered. There was no legal basis on which to justify exhumation. There had been no mistake as to the place of burial, but simply a change of mind after a long period of time, which was not a proper reason for allowing an exception to the general rule that burial should be regarded as final.

Faculty granted for exhumation. Principles in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] considered and special circumstances found.

The petitioner's mother's ashes had been interred in the South London Cemetery in 1993. The intention of the family at that time had been that the interment would be temporary, until the petitioner's father died, when the remains of both parents would be buried together. They had not been informed that the interment had been into consecrated ground, and that a faculty would be needed to authorise the removal of the petitioner's mother's remains at a later date. Before he died, the petitioner's father expressed a wish to be buried, rather than cremated. The petitioner wished to have her mother's ashes exhumed and interred with her father's body in Epsom Cemetery. The Chancellor decided that a mistake had been made and that he should authorise the exhumation and reinterment as requested. He did not insist that the ashes should be reinterred in consecrated ground.

In 1999 the petitioner reserved a grave in the cemetery next to the grave of his late sister. He was given a deed recording the reservation. In 2016 he discovered that someone had been buried in the grave he had reserved. He complained to the burial authority, who said the register had been amended to record a different grave number. The Chancellor was satisfied that the petitioner had not agreed to a change of reserved grave. The petitioner, first directly and then through solicitors, failed to persuade the burial authority to arrange an exhumation and reinterment in another grave. He therefore applied for a faculty. Whilst accepting that there had been an administrative mistake by the burial authority, the Chancellor decided not to grant a faculty, because of "the possibility of real consequences" for the family of the person buried in the grave and the alternative possibilities for the petitioner to be buried in another nearby grave, or in the same grave as his sister, or "the prospect of exhuming [his sister's] remains so that they could be reburied in a plot with space to the side".

The petitioner, of Polish origin, wished to exhume her mother's ashes from the cemetery in Spalding and have them taken to Poland and interred in the grave of her father in a Polish cemetery. The petitioner was planning to return to Poland permanently and had no relatives left in England. All her late relatives' graves were in Poland. The Chancellor decided that special circumstances existed for exhumation to be permitted and he therefore granted a faculty.

Before her father's death in 2015, the petitioner had found the task of looking after her parents too great. They both needed constant care. Her father was frail and her mother suffered from dementia. The couple, who had been married for 70 years, were both moved to a care home. When her father died shortly afterwards, the petitioner, in distress and haste, had his ashes interred in plot 734 in the cemetery, which was a family grave of his wife's relatives. Afterwards, the petitioner felt she had made the wrong decision and she purchased plot 1425 close by, with a view to it becoming a family grave for the remains of both of her parents when her mother died. Her mother died in 2020, but her ashes had not yet been interred in plot 1425. There was in fact no further room in plot 734 for her ashes to be interred there. The Chancellor decided that the circumstances were such as to justify the grant of a faculty to allow the exhumation of the petitioner's father's ashes and their reinterment in plot 1425 with his wife's ashes.

The Chancellor declined to grant a faculty to permit the exhumation of the petitioner's grandfather's cremated remains from the churchyard at Orford and reinterment in the grave of his wife in Warrington Cemetry. No sufficient exceptional circumstances had been shown: the petitioner's grandfather had died 18 months after his wife had been buried in the cemetery and the family (who said that they had mistakenly thought that his remains could not be buried in the same grave as his wife, who had been a Roman Catholic) had decided to have his remains buried in Orford churchyard; a long period of time (21 years) had elapsed since his death; and there was no support for the exhumation from the parish.

An application had been made to set aside a partially executed faculty for exhumation and reinterment of cremated remains. The application was made after the exhumation of the cremated remains, but before their intended reinterment in a family grave in a parish in Northern Ireland where the deceased had been born. The original petitioner and the present applicant were brother and sister. The Chancellor found that the petitioner had been “highly economical with the truth” about sibling relatives when applying for the faculty. When two of his siblings discovered that the remains had been exhumed, his sister in Northern Ireland (who did not have a good relationship with the petitioner) advised the Registry that she and one of her brothers had not been advised of the faculty application and would have objected to it. She therefore applied to set aside the faculty. For the reasons stated in the judgment, the Chancellor decided to dismiss the application to set aside the faculty, in order that the deceased’s remains could be interred next to his father’s remains in Northern Ireland.

The petitioner wished to exhume his wife's remains from a grave (intended as a double grave for his wife and himself) in an area which was regularly waterlogged in winter, and to reinter the remains in another part of the same churchyard. The Chancellor decided that there were exceptional circumstances to justify the grant of a faculty for exhumation and reinterment.

The parish priest applied for a restoration order following the interment in the churchyard without permission of a portion of the cremated remains of the novelist Tom Sharpe, together with various other items. The Chancellor granted a restoration order.