The issue of the permanence of Christian burial and the circumstances in which, exceptionally, exhumation and reinterment of remains might be authorised by faculty has arisen once again in Re St X, the Cremated Remains of AA [2018] ECC Lic 7.
The background
AA and BB were married for some forty years. It was a second marriage for both of them and each had children from their previous marriages. BB died in 2008 and her remains were buried in a grave with the remains of her parents in the closed churchyard of St X [1]. AA died in 2016 and his ashes were buried in the same grave [5 & 6].
In 2014, solicitors for BB’s granddaughter, CC (whose mother was BB’s daughter from her first marriage) told AA that she was going to make allegations that he had abused her sexually between the ages of five and thirteen – but AA was never prosecuted and his children subsequently rejected her allegations [3]. Continue reading