The petitioner's father had been buried in the consecrated part of Streatham Park Cemetery in 1961 in the same grave as a stillborn child of his parents. The petitioner's mother had been buried in the Roman Catholic part of the same cemetery in 1958. The petitioner sought a faculty to exhume the remains of his father in order that they should be reinterred in a cemetery in Belgium together with the remains of his mother, whose remains it was also proposed to exhume. The petition was advanced on the ground that the petitioner's father had wanted to be buried with the petitioner's mother and that his burial in the grave of the stillborn child of his parents had not been in accordance with his wishes. The proposal that re-interment should be in Belgium arose because the petitioner's parents had met there during the Second World War and there remained numerous family members in Belgium. The petitioner was not content that his parents should be re-interred together in Streatham Park Cemetery because of concerns he had about standards of maintenance there. The Roman Catholic authorities supported what was proposed, so far as they related to the exhumation of the petitioner's mother. The chancellor concluded that, after such a lapse of time, it was difficult to conclude on slender evidence that the manner of the petitioner's father's burial had been contrary to his wishes. Nevertheless, the chancellor held that the petitioner's belief that that was the case was a reasonable one, having an objective basis in fact. Faculties for exhumation were for the benefit of the living rather than the dead. Justification for what was proposed should, therefore, ultimately rest on what the petitioner believed on reasonable grounds. That did not necessarily mean that the court should grant the petition as sought: it would be possible for what the petitioner believed to represent his father's wishes to be fulfilled by his parents being re-interred together in the same cemetery. But the chancellor concluded that the court ought to facilitate ‘the best possible solution’ and that was represented by what the petitioner proposed. Following Re Blagdon Cemetery [2002] Fam 299, it was no longer necessarily objectionable to grant a faculty authorising re-interment in unconsecrated ground: it would depend on the facts of the particular case. The chancellor was prepared to assume that the re-interment in Belgium would be in land that would be suitably maintained and would be permanent. A faculty would be granted accordingly.
A further proposal contained in the petition involved the exhumation and cremation of the remains of the stillborn child in whose grave the petitioner's father had been buried and their interment in Kent, where the ashes of the child's father were interred. Subject to giving the petitioner the opportunity to request a hearing in open court on the question, a faculty would be refused for that aspect of the petition as there had been no mistake or misunderstanding surrounding the burial of the stillborn child and an exceptional circumstance had not been established. [Alexander McGregor]
