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Re St Michael and All Angels, Pelsall

Lichfield Consistory Court: Eyre Ch, 5 November 2017 [2017] ECC Lic 5 Exhumation – exceptional circumstances

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2018

Ruth Arlow*
Affiliation:
Chancellor of the Dioceses of Norwich and Salisbury
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Abstract

Type
Case Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2018 

At the time of the interment of the deceased's cremated remains in the churchyard in 1991, her family was unhappy with the arrangements for the burial as parish policy required that plots were marked with stones placed in columns, two abreast with no space between the stones. It was felt that this gave the unseemly appearance of a paved path. By the time that her husband's remains were interred in the same churchyard in 2017, policy had changed and the interment of cremated remains took place in slightly larger plots marked by separate headstones. The chancellor inferred that the reason for the change in policy was that others had formed the same opinion as the deceased's family about the appropriateness of the earlier arrangements. The deceased's son petitioned for the exhumation of his mother's remains for their re-interment with the remains of her husband. The faculty was granted on the basis that special circumstances existed which justified an exception to the norm of permanence. This was not a case where there had been a change of mind by the family; the subjection of the family's personal preferences to the collective approach of the Parochial Church Council and incumbent was commendable and ought not to be held against them. The creation of a family grave also militated in favour of the petition. [RA]