Exhumations

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.

The Chancellor refused to grant a faculty for exhumation. The petitioner wished to exhume the recently interred cremated remains of her husband from the churchyard and reinter them in her garden. The petitioner said that she had had differences with the vicar and for that reason she found it painful and distressing to visit her husband's grave. The Chancellor did not regard these circumstances sufficiently exceptional to justify the grant of a faculty.

The petitioner wished to have the remains of her father ("the deceased") exhumed from the grave immediately next to the grave of his second wife and reinterred in the grave of the deceased's first wife, which grave also contained the remains of the deceased's parents, in order that a new memorial bearing the names of all four members of the family could then be put on the grave. The Chancellor ruled that there were no special circumstances which would justify the grant of a faculty. It appeared that before his death the deceased believed that there was no room for him to be buried in the same grave as his first wife and parents and was content to be buried elsewhere in the churchyard. His second wife died shortly after the deceased from a terminal illness, and it was assumed that they would naturally wish to be buried together after 28 years' marriage. Moreover, 25 years had passed since the deceased's death, and there was no explanation as to why an application had not been made earlier.

The petitioner wished to have the cremated remains of his father exhumed from one plot in the cemetery and reinterred in another plot with the cremated remains of his recently deceased mother. The reasons given for the application were: (1) the petitioner's father's burial plot was close to the entrance of the cemetery, and when members of the family visited the plot, all other people visiting the cemetery would be passing by them; (2) there was no convenient seat at which to sit and reflect; and (3) the plot was next to a gully cover. The Chancellor was satisfied that the petitioner genuinely found the location of the plot unsuitable, but he could not find any exceptional reason to justify exhumation.

The petitioner's husband's cremated remains had been interred in the cemetery at Stoke by Clare in 2001. Since that time, the petitioner had moved to Haverhill. By reason of her age and cuts in local transport, the petitioner was now finding it difficult to visit her husband's grave, and she wished to have his remains exhumed and reinterred in Haverhill Cemetery. The Chancellor was unable to grant a faculty, as he found that the circumstances did not provide an exception such as the law required him to find before permitting an exhumation.

The Chancellor granted a faculty to authorise the exhumation of the remains of the petitioner's father and reinterment after the removal of some jewellery, which, owing to a mistake by the funeral directors, had been included in the interment, contrary to the wishes of the family.