General Chat

This has horrified me so wanted to share info. with you incase it might affect your family. A friend's bachelor brother died last week and it was left to her to organse his funeral, their parents having died. When their mum died in the 1960s, their dad organised a double plot for him and his wife. However in time he married again and later said to my friend, his daughter, that he didn't think it would now be appropriate for him to be buried in the double plot but it was his wish that when the time came, Robert, his son should be buried there and he gave her the paperwork regarding the grave. When the father died without a will in the 1980s it seems that everything passed to his then wife, who has since died. My friend was left with no rights to open her mother's grave without the permission of her stepbother, heir to her stepmother's estate, which included rights over the grave. She is not allowed to remove the headstone to have an inscription added because it belongs to her stepbrother now. Thankfully bureaucracy has seen sense and at last my friend was allowed to swear on oath that her father's wish was for Robert to be buried with his mother and so the funeral could go ahead this week. If she hadn't been able to do this, the alternative was to have him cremated and keep the ashes until such time as she could locate her step brother, who she hasn't seen in years,and ask his permission to open her own mother's grave. If you know someone with a family burial plot with room for other members get the paperwork sorted to prevent a repeat of this situation.

Thanks for the warning Gwyneth- this must have been a nightmare situation for your friend-as you said- bureaucracy gone mad!!!!

The problem is Gwyneth that folk just don't see a Grave Deed as being a valuable part of the Estate of a deceased. The rights to interment in a grave owned by a deceased person pass to their next of kin, and as in your friend's case "out" of the family for which the grave was intended. It's not such an unusual situation, happens daily I'm afraid and most Cemetery Authorities do not allow burial in a grave without the express permission of the owner, as it leaves them liable to litigation. Bit difficult of course if the owner of the grave is actually deceased, so ownership must be proved (via a solicitor) before a grave can be reopened for a further interment. Jacqui

My father died in 2002 and he was the owner of the grave in which my stillborn twin lay. The ownership passed to my mother but she was already aged 90 and my sisters and I had been granted Power of Attorney for her. We had to use this POA to arrange for the ownership to be passed to me, before I could get the grave opened in order to put my father's ashes in it. There was an argument that perhaps the ownership might have passed to one of my sisters but I persuaded the council that as my twin was in it, then I had the strongest link. Now my mother has also died but it's easy compared to last time. If we hadn't had the POA. I'm not sure where we would have been!

After our Aunt (My Mums Sister) and Uncle died , they never had any children the grave papers became the property of my older cousin When another Aunt & Uncle died (My Mums Brother) they also had no children, we were able to bury them in the same grave When arranging the funerals we produced the grave papers and there wasn't any problem. We had a bit of a dilemma when my mother in law died because she had always said that she wanted burying in the grave that contained her parents her first husband (my husbands father) her brother and a nephew But as she had been married to her second husband for over 40 years we asked him what he wanted so we purchased a new grave and they are both buried there Bren

Thank you for sharing your own experiences. It has certainly been a big eye opener for me as I'd never heard of any such problems in my own family.