But, in England and Wales, the likelihood of securing permission depends on where the remains have been buried. Exhuming a corpse or interred ashes requires legal permission. In August 2015, the Church of England spoke out against the idea of “exhumation on demand”, with families increasingly wanting to relocate a loved one’s grave when moving house. For example, as my own research documented, in parts of Canada, the older parent or the older or eldest sibling has the final decision, while several US states prioritise the person who had the closest personal relationship with the deceased. In other countries, there is specific legislation. English courts tend to decide on a case-by-case basis. Where two people fall within the same category (for example, siblings fighting over the funeral arrangements for a dead parent, or separated parents fighting over a dead child), there is no hard and fast legal rule. Cohabitants do not quality under this ranking, regardless of how long they were living with the deceased. Under current English law, the deceased’s surviving spouse or civil partner is at the top of the hierarchy, followed by children, then parents and siblings, working down through the family.
If the individual died intestate, without leaving a will, the highest ranking personal representative (the person legally entitled to administer the deceased’s estate) gets the final say. But where the deceased made a will, the executor is legally entitled to decide the funeral arrangements – something which is not well known – and may come as a surprise where the executor is not a family member.
#FROSTPUNK CEMETERY OR CORPSE DISPOSAL HOW TO#
My family can ignore specific directions set out in a will or prepaid funeral plan: it doesn’t matter how many times I tell them whether I want to be buried or cremated, and what type of funeral I actually want.ĭisputes over how to dispose of the body can trigger bitter rows within families. Your wishes don’t really countįuneral instructions are not legally binding. Neither method is commercially available yet in the UK, but would be a perfectly legal alternative to burial or cremation. The result: an odourless, organic residue which becomes a dry powder when the water content is evaporated off, and turns to compost when buried in a small bio-degradable container. Promession is at a more developmental stage, and uses liquid nitrogen to super-cool the body before the brittle remains are shattered using ultrasonic vibration. The result is a sterile liquid, and bones which can be crushed and given to the deceased’s family (similar to post-cremation ashes). Resomation – already available in parts of the US and Australia – is a liquefaction process which uses alkaline hydrolysis to dissolve the body’s organic matter inside a steel container. Two new optionsĪlthough burial and cremation are the most common ways of disposing of bodies, two new methods are emerging. Cropped from Wicker Paradise/flickr, CC BY 2. Wicker baskets are a legal alternative to coffins. That’s unless the deceased is being buried at sea (a specific type of coffin is needed here), or individual crematoria insist on one to facilitate handling the body.
And while a corpse must be “decently covered” the use of a coffin is not mandatory: a shroud, cardboard box or wicker basket are suitable options. There’s also no legal requirement to use a funeral director, and English law does not insist on embalming unless, for example, a corpse is being repatriated or moved between countries. The law has changed to allow funeral pyres – but only in an enclosed building – after lobbying by Hindu and Sikh religious communities. Cremation, however, can only take place in a licensed crematorium. Natural burial in fields or woodland areas, burial at sea, and even burial in private land (a family farm, or even the deceased’s own back yard) are permissible options. For example, there are no set time limits for disposing of the dead.īurial in a churchyard or cemetery is not the only option. Certain aspects are heavily regulated – such as the minimum depth of graves, the siting and management of burial grounds and crematoria – but there are comparatively few laws governing actual bodily disposal. Respect for the dead and protecting public health make burial or cremation an urgent task when someone dies. It also triggers certain laws around what happens to the body after death – and some glaring omissions. Death touches everyone at some stage during their lives, and usually more than once.
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