Exhumations

The petitioner wished to exhume the cremated remains of her husband from the churchyard at Ranmore in Surrey and reinter them in the churchyard at Fulbourn in Cambridgeshire. The deceased's remains had been interred in 2011, and in 2022 the petitioner had moved to live in Cambridgeshire. The petitioner was concerned that in years to come she might become physically unable to visit her husband's grave in Surrey. The Deputy Chancellor refused to grant a faculty. Following the guidance in the Court of Arches decision in re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] 4 All ER 482, moving residence was not an exceptional reason to justify a departure from the normal rule that interment in consecrated ground should be regarded as permanent.

The petitioners, who lived in Lincolnshire, wished to exhume from the churchyard of St. Bartholomew Arborfield in Oxfordshire the cremated remains of their son and only child, who died aged 6 from leukaemia in 1981. They wished to reinter his remains in a new family grave in the churchyard of All Saints North Cave in the Diocese of York, where many of his mother's relatives were already buried and where the petitioners wished their remains to be buried. The Chancellor granted a faculty. He considered that special circumstances existed which constituted good and proper reasons for making an exception to the normal rule that Christian burial was final, including (inter alia) the absence of any connection between the child and Arborfield; the petitioners having had no settled home at the time of their son's death; the intense grief of the petitioners at his death and the pressure to have his remains interred as soon as possible; and the desire to create a family grave.

The petitioner wished to exhume the cremated remains of her late father and reinter them elsewhere in the same churchyard in the grave of her mother, who died one year after her father. The Chancellor considered that there were special circumstances which allowed him to grant a faculty.

The petitioner wished to have the ashes of her mother exhumed and scattered over the hills north of Newtown in Powys. The ashes had been buried in the churchyard at Naunton Beauchamp, at the insistence of the petitioner's former sister-in-law. All the deceased's other children recalled their mother expressing a wish to have her ashes scattered in Wales, and they supported the petitioner's wish. Whilst accpting that this was a borderline case for allowing an exhumation as an exception to the general rule against disturbing human remains, the Chanmcellor decided to grant a faculty to the petitioner: ' ... whilst it is “generally” right that mourners should learn to let go, it appears that she will be unable to do so until her mother’s ashes have been scattered as proposed; only then, it seems to me, will she be able to recover her psychological and spiritual health.'

The petitioner had discovered that the memorial to her husband had not been laid directly over the casket containing his ashes, when she had previously been assured by a churchwarden this that was not the case. (She in fact had taken it upon herself without faculty to move the casket under the memorial.) The petitioner felt that she had been deliberately misled, and she wished to have her husband's ashes exhumed and reinterred in a local cemetery. This had given rise to a breakdown in relationships between the petitioner and the vicar and churchwardens. The petitioner claimed that every time she visited her husband's grave she felt anger and grievance towards the vicar and churchwardens. The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty for exhumation and reinterment: "The fact that the widow or widower of a person whose remains have been interred in a particular churchyard has strong feelings of anger and grievance towards the incumbent and churchwardens of the particular church cannot justify the exhumation of the remains in question."

Faculty granted for exhumation from  a husband's grave in England and reinterment in the grave of his wife in Australia. The judgment contains a discussion of the decisions in a number of "portable remains" and "family grave" cases.

The Petitioner wished to have her late husband's remains exhumed and reinterred in a churchyard nearer to where she now lived, her reason for the request being that she now found it difficult to visit her husband's grave. Applying the principles laid down by the Court of Arches in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, the Chancellor refused to grant a faculty.

The petitioner's father had died  in 1989 and his cremated remains had been buried in the churchyard. The petitioner's mother died in 2022 and her body had been buried in another part of the churchyard. The petitioner wished to have his father's ashes exhumed and placed in his mother's grave. The Chancellor decided to grant a faculty, the petitioner's mother having throughout her life held the mistaken belief that she could be buried with her husband, and the desirability of supporting a 'family grave' as set out in Re Blagdon Cemetery[2002] Fam 299.

The petitioner sought a faculty to authorise the exhumation of the cremated remains of his father, who died in 1986, from New Mills churchyard and reinterment at Thornsett Cemetery in a plot which the petitioner had reserved. The petitioner's mother had recently died, but her cremated remains had not yet been interred. The petitioner stated that his mother had expressed a wish for her cremated remains to be buried at Thornsett. The petitioner therefore sought to respect his mother’s wishes and also unite his parents’ remains at Thornsett. The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty. The cremated remains of both parents could be reunited at New Mills. The Chancellor did not consider that the wish to create a new family grave elsewhere justified the disturbance of an existing family grave.

The petitioner wished to have the cremated remains of her brother exhumed from the grave containing the remains of their parents. The petitioner's sister and the deceased's daughter had arranged the interment without the knowledge of the petitioner. This had caused some consternation in the rest of the family, because the deceased had been estranged from the family and they thought it inappropriate for him to be buried with his parents as he was alleged to have subjected his mother to an act of physical violence. The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty, having decided that the petitioner's application did not meet the test of exceptionality envisaged in the case of Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, so as to justify allowing exhumation. Nor did the petitioner's application "amount to a sufficiently good reason by reference to a ‘right thinking’ member of the church at large" (referencing the decision in Re Christ Church Alsager [1998] Chancery Court of York).