By way of a grave space reservation petition, two sisters of a recently deceased man petitioned for a faculty to inter his cremated remains in the existing grave of his late wife. Members of both his and her family, including his other two sisters and the couple’s son, objected on the grounds that she was the victim of alleged domestic abuse from her husband.
The court referred to Re the Cremated Remains of A [2018] ECC Lic 7, in which, following the interment of a husband’s cremated remains in a family grave along with the remains of his late wife, a granddaughter of the couple sought a faculty for the exhumation of his ashes for reburial elsewhere on the basis that he had repeatedly abused her when she was a child. A faculty had been granted on the basis that, in rare cases, the fact that the presence of particular remains in a grave had become the cause of distress or conflict was capable of being an exceptional circumstance justifying exhumation. The court had particularly noted that if the position had been fully set out in advance of the interment, and, in particular, if the views of the petitioner had been known (as they would have been if the court had been told all the circumstances), then it was almost inconceivable that permission would have been given for the interment in the first place.
In the present case, the court noted the burden on a petitioner for exhumation was the greater, because of the presumption of permanence of Christian burial. It was satisfied that the fact that the presence of particular human or cremated remains in a grave would become a cause of distress or conflict, or a focus of grievance, between family members, and those attending to mourn at the graveside, constituted a good and sufficient reason to refuse a faculty the effect of which would be to authorise the interment of such remains within an existing grave.
The consistory court should not accept the mere assertion of domestic abuse unless there was some credible evidence, put forward in good faith, to support the existence of such abuse. However, the present allegations of abuse were credible and corroborated by the evidence of the husband’s two sisters, the late wife’s sister and the couple’s only child; and they could not be ignored. It would not be just to compel the objectors to mourn the wife at a grave containing the cremated remains of her husband and perceived abuser; and the court could not condone such a situation, still less participate actively in bringing it about. Accordingly the petition would be refused.
The judgment was anonymised to protect the respect due to the private and family lives of those mentioned in this judgment and thus to secure the proper administration of justice.
In obiter remarks concerning any memorial inscription to the husband, the court noted that the owner of the existing memorial (which had been installed by the husband) was the son of the husband and his late wife. This would not have been (as the judgment suggests) in his capacity as the husband’s next of kin, but, following the husband’s death, as the late wife’s heir at law: section 66(5) of the Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction and Care of Churches Measure 2018.
