Exhumations

Two Faculty Petitions, each seeking exhumation of cremated remains from an area where access was difficult for an elderly relative, and reinterment in a more accessible location about six feet away. Faculty refused in each case, the Chancellor being unable to find sufficient justification to grant a Faculty within the guidelines set out in the Court of Arches decision in Re Blagdon, but suggesting that the memorials might be moved to the alternative locations, so as to provide easier access and so that the elderly relatives could choose for their own cremated remains to be interred in due course either in the graves of their loved ones or beneath the newly moved memorials.

The petitioner, who was aged 81 and used a wheelchair, found access to her mother’s grave in Gunton churchyard very difficult, as the grave was a good way back from the churchyard path. She therefore applied for a faculty to authorise the exhumation of her mother’s remains and re-interment in a nearby cemetery. The Chancellor, after considering the principles laid down in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, determined that no special reasons existed which would justify an exception to the norm of permanence of Christian burial.

The Chancellor, taking into account the guidance in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002], determined that there were special reasons for permitting exhumation and reinterment. The cremated remains of the father of the three petitioning children had been buried in a parish churchyard. At the time it was intended that his wife's cremated remains should be placed with his. When his wife died, the children found that her will said that she wished to be buried in a family grave in a cemetery. They mistakenly felt obliged to comply with the terms of the will, but this defeated the original intention of the mother and the father to be buried together. After the second burial the children regretted not having buried their parents together and made a fairly prompt application to rectify the situation. Accordingly, the Chancellor allowed the cremated remains of the father to be exhumed and reinterred in the family grave in the cemetery.

The Chancellor found that there were special circumstances (as set out in the judgment) which justified him in granting a faculty for exhumation and reinterment in the same churchyard. The petitioner wished to move the cremated remains of his father to the grave of his mother, who had died recently and who had expressed a wish before her death to have her body buried and for her husband's cremated remains to be moved into the same grave, not realising that there could be difficulties in carrying out her wishes.

The petitioner wished to have the remains of her late husband exhumed from the churchyard of the parish church of St. Peter Ireleth and reinterred in another plot in the same churchyard. The reason given for the request was that access to the current grave was inconvenient and unsafe, being impeded by scaffolding poles which had been in position since 2019, due to problems with the church roof, which could only be resolved as and when the church could raise the money to pay for the work. The Deputy Chancellor determined that there were no sufficiently exceptional circumstances to justify the grant of a faculty for exhumation. Whilst access might be inconvenient, it was not unsafe and the difficulties were not likely to be long-lasting.

The petitioner sought a faculty to authorise the exhumation of the cremated remains of his wife from the churchyard at Up Hatherley, in order that the remains might be reinterred in Australia, where the couple had lived since emigrating there in 1980 and had brought up their family. Following his wife's death, the petitioner, against the wishes of his family, including his wife (an atheist), who had made it known to the rest of her family that she had no wish to be buried in a Christian churchyard in England, arranged to have his wife's ashes interred in the churchyard at Up Hatherley. After recovering from an illness after the interment in England, the petitioner realised that he had made a mistake in having his wife's ashes interred in an English churchyard against her wishes and wished to have her ashes moved to Australia. The Deputy Chancellor decided that the mistake constituted an exceptional ground for allowing exhumation.

The petitioner wished to have the cremated remains of his wife exhumed from just outside the south nave wall, as it was proposed to build a small extension to the church over the site of the interment. The petitioner's reason for making the application was that he wished his wife's ashes to be moved to a part of the churchyard where his own ashes could in due time be buried with hers. The Chancellor determeined that this was an appropriate case in which to grant a faculty. 

The cremated remains of a father and his son had been interred in adjacent plots. When the mother died, her cremated remains were interred (due to the error of the burial authority which maintained the churchyard) in the grave of her son, rather than with the remains of her husband, as had been her wish. The next of kin proposed that the exhumation of the remains of the father and reinterment in the grave of his wife and son would be preferable to the exhumation of the remains of the mother and reinterment with the remains of her husband. The Chancellor granted a faculty on this basis: "This is an appropriate and desirable result creating as it does a family grave containing the remains of all three members of that family."

The Chancellor granted a faculty to permit the exhumation of the petitioner's mother's cremated remains, in order to facilitate the interment of the Petitioner's father's remains in the grave, with her mother's ashes placed in her father's coffin.

The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty to allow the petitioner's father's cremated remains to be exhumed and scattered with the petitioner's mother's cremated remains at Skerray in northern Scotland. The petitioner's mother had said before she died that she felt she had made a mistake in having her husband's remains interred at the church and felt it more appropriate for the ashes of both of them to be scattered at Skerray, a place which had meant much to them during their lives. Following the guidelines laid down in the Court of Arches decision in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, the Chancellor stated that a change of mind as to a place of interment was not an exceptional circumstance which might justify exhumation. Also, the scattering of ashes would be contrary to the church's duty to protect interred remains, so that, once exhumed, they should be reinterred intact.