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Alphabetical Index of all judgments on this web site as at 1 October 2022

Index by Dioceses of 2022 judgments on this web site as at 1 October 2022

Exhumations

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A baby had died about an hour after its birth and the parents arranged for it to be buried in Northfleet Cemetery. They afterwards regretted their hasty decision to have the baby buried. The mother's mental health, supported by medical evidence, had suffered. She wished to have the body exhumed and cremated, with the intention of retaining the cremated remains at home until she had recovered from her grief. The Chancellor granted a faculty, subject to conditions that the cremated remains should be interred in consecrated ground within 10 years, and until interment the cremated remains should be retained in a respectful and careful manner.

The petitioner wished to have the body of her 15 year old daughter, who had committed suicide in 2018, exhumed and cremated. The family had been finding life difficult in Durham following the family tragedy. They wished to move to Canada, where they had relatives, and to take the petitioner's daughter's remains with them, where they could be interred. The Chancellor, applying the principles laid down in the Court of Arches decision in  Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, determined that the petitioner had failed to prove that there were exceptional circumstances to justify the grant of a faculty for exhumation.

In 1997 the deceased had requested the reservation of the grave at the foot of the grave of her late husband. Owing to an administrative mistake the wrong plot number was allocated, but the deceased did not realise that the grave number was incorrect. At the funeral, the family realised that the grave for the deceased had been dug in the wrong place, but felt unable to do other than proceed with the funeral. They subsequently sought a faculty for exhumation and reinterment in the intended grave. The Chancellor was satisfied that a genuine mistake had been made, which could be regarded as an exception to the presumption of permanence of burial. He therefore granted a faculty for exhumation and reinterment, in order to correct the error.

The petitioner wished to exhume the remains of her mother-in-law ("the deceased") from Peel Cemetery and reinter them in a private chapel called The Chantry, at Crogga, where the remains of the deceased's son and the petitioner's husband were laid. The petitioner's husband was a prominent member of the Roman Catholic community in the island. The Vicar General decided that this was an appropriate exceptional circumstance justifying a departure from the principle of permanence of burial as expressed in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299. He therefore granted a faculty. However, under Isle of Man law remains could be exhumed and reburied only if moved from one piece of consecrated land to another piece of consecrated land (that is land consecrated according to the Anglican tradition), but the Chantry was not so consecrated. Therefore, in addition to the faculty, the petitioner would need to obtain the consent of the Department of Environment, Food and Agriculture.

A Faculty was granted for exhumation. The judgment contains a lengthy discussion as to what may amount to “exceptional circumstances” to justify exhumation.

The Petitioner wished to exhume the cremated remains of her late mother from one plot in the consecrated area of the cemetery and reinter them in another consecrated plot in the same cemetery. The Petitioner's father had died in 2006 and had been buried in the cemetery. In 2007 the Petitioner purchased a plot for her mother near to her father's plot, and when her mother died in 2010 the Petitioner arranged for her mother's remains to be buried in the separate plot which she had purchased, even though her mother had expressed a wish, shortly before she died, to be buried with her husband. The Petitioner subsequently felt guilty at not having carried out her mother's wishes and now wished to have her mother's remains interred with her father's.The Deputy Chancellor decided that there were no special circumstances within the guidelines laid down in Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] to justify him in granting a faculty.

The petitioner, after discovering that the remains of her husband (a Roman Catholic of an Italian family) had been interred in a consecrated part of Putney Vale cemetery, wished to have his remains exhumed and reinterred in unconsecrated ground. The Chancellor granted a faculty on the basis that a mistake had occurred, which justified exhumation. He agreed that the exhumation could take place, provided that the remains were reinterred in the unconsecrated churchyard of the the petitioner's church, the Church of Our Lady of Pity and St. Simon Stock in Putney.

The petitioner, a Buddhist, applied for three faculties to permit the exhumation of the remains of his brother, who died in 1991, his grandmother, who died in 1993, and his father, who died in 2014, all Buddhists, from the consecrated area of Putney Vale Cemetery, for reinterment in the unconsecrated part of the cemetery. After the third interment, the petitioner had been advised by his family that, according to Buddhist tradition, it was inappropriate to bury Buddhists in consecrated ground and that it would cause "bad Karma" for the family. The petitioners sought to rectify what his family perceived to be a mistake. Faculties granted by the Chancellor: " I am glad that I have felt able to grant these petitions. The faith of Church of England is very different to the Buddhist faith and its views about the appropriate treatment of the remains of those who have died evidently diverge but the views of Mr Khiet Kham Hong and his family are genuinely held and are appropriately treated with respect.

The petitioner, a Vietnamese, wished to exhume the remains of his father, which had been buried in Putney Vale Cemetery according to Vietnamese Buddhist rites, and to re-inter the remains in another part of the cemetery, next to the grave of his mother. The reason the Petitioner gave for his petition was that, "According to our Vietnamese tradition and culture, the eldest son of the family will have to carry out the exhumation of the deceased father's body 10 years after it was first buried, and then to re-bury it." The Chancellor granted a faculty. The judgment includes a consideration of Articles 8 and 9 of the  European Convention on Human Rights.

The Chancellor granted a faculty to authorise the exhumation of the remains of a Buddhist who had been buried in 1994 in a consecrated  part of Southern Cemetery Manchester, so that the remains could be cremated and the ashes placed with the ashes of his wife, who died in 2016, in the Buddhist Temple of Manchester Fo Guan Shan. At the time of the interment in 1994, the family was unaware that the burial was in a Church of England consecrated part of the cemetery, and also at that time there was no facility in Manchester for the storage of cremated remains in accordance with the Buddhist faith.