The petitioner sought a faculty for the reservation of the two remaining shelves in a family vault for the interment of his remains and those of his fiancée respectively. The vault was in a closed churchyard where the only body burials permitted were those within existing graves or vaults. A cousin of the petitioner objected to the petition on the grounds that the petitioner's fiancée was not a direct descendant of the vault's creator and as such had no right of burial in the vault; to allow a reservation for the fiancée's remains would exclude the possibility of those who were entitled having their remains interred in the vault. By way of compromise, the petitioner suggested that he and his fiancée would agree that their remains should be cremated when the time came, that the first set of remains should be retained until the death and cremation of the other and then both sets should, together, be interred on just one of the remaining two shelves. The court could not approve the compromise suggested by the petitioner. It is desirable that interment take place in a reasonable period after death and the court could not sanction a course which contemplated a long interval between death and interment.

The chancellor was satisfied that he had power to grant an exclusive right of burial over a particular area in a vault. Nevertheless, the power to reserve a space in a vault was not normally to be exercised when its effect would be to prejudice the rights of others to be buried in the vault. Accordingly, regard was to be had to the available space and the degree of risk that the reservation would prevent a person entitled to be interred in the vault from being buried there when there would otherwise be sufficient space. The chancellor was satisfied that, upon the petitioner's marriage, his fiancée, now wife, would be entitled to be buried in the vault as a member of the family of the vault's creator. There was, however, no proper reason to give the petitioner and his fiancée precedence over his cousin in relation to the remaining space in the vault. There was no reason why more than one set of remains could not be interred on a single shelf within the vault such that all entitled parties could be interred in the vault when their time came. The petition was dismissed. [RA]