Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/118

 Six Feet of Ground. require that a corpse should not be disin terred or transported from place to place, except under extreme circumstances of exigency. A husband, because of representations made by his wife's relatives that according to the doctrines of her church her remains ought to be buried in consecrated ground, interred the body in a Roman Catholic cemetery, though owning a lot in another cemetery at the time. Afterwards he discov ered that he could not be buried in conse crated ground beside his wife, and also learned that he could have a grave in the cemetery in which he owned a lot conse crated according to the ritual of his wife's church. He proposed to consecrate a new grave and remove the body thereto, so that he might be buried beside her. It was held that the husband may remove the body of his deceased wife from one burial lot owned by him to another owned by him, and that a court will not, upon application of a brother and sister of deceased wife, restrain such re moval by injunction, without good cause, and that the religious reason was not a good cause, when a grave in the cemetery to which he proposed to remove the body could be consecrated so that the remains would be buried in accordance with the faith of the deceased wife. In another case the deceased, at her re quest and with the concurrence of all her children, except one, was buried in her sis ter's lot. The one child who did not consent was absent in South America. Upon his re turn he paid all the expenses of the funeral of his mother, and shortly afterwards died, leaving a will directing the erection of a vault in a beautiful city cemetery in which he desired the remains of himself, his mother and others of his family to be placed. The executors built the vault and asked to re move the remains of the mother to it. This was objected to by the sister and a child. The court said that after interment all right of control .over the remains is with the next living kin. It is only the living who can give

93

the protection or be burdened with the duty of protection from which the right springs. It is only the living whose feelings can be outraged by any unlawful disturbance of the deceased. It is a right in which all of the next of kin have an equal interest. It must be something more than sentiment or ab stract right which will induce a court of equity to enforce the claim of the next of kin by the invasion of the burial place. The woman was buried where she desired to be, with the consent of her children. She is with her father, mother and first born. On the monument is inscribed her name. Beneath it their ashes have commingled. It is fitting they should remain undisturbed. In a Rhode Island case the widow re moved the body of her deceased husband from its former place of burial to another cemetery against the protests of the only child, and the court was of opinion that the body should be restored to the place of its first interment. The court said they would regulate the interment of a body as a sacred trust for the benefit of all who may from family or friendship have an interest in it, so as to interfere in case of improper con duct, such as preventing other relatives from visiting the place for the purpose of indul gence of feeling or of testifying their respect or affection for the deceased. There is an interesting case which decides that where a body of a deceased husband had been buried for two years, and the widow desired to remove it, it could not be done; for after burial a wife had no right or control over the body of her deceased husband. The disposition of the remains belongs there after exclusively to the next of kin. The duty of the wife to bury the body of her de ceased husband terminated with the actual interment in the first instance. As widow she had no right to it after the interment. The court in this last case clinched their position with an odd question, one that other courts have been disposed to criticise. They ask this question : Suppose a woman has had three husbands who have all died leaving