Adding remains to grave without permission

getmore4less

dori2o wrote: »

Not sure but its got many years left as I believe it was renewed upon the last official internment 30 years ago.

The headstone is less than 30 years old and has never shown signs of movement.

If it was renewed 30 years ago how long was it leased before that?

There is a hard limit on the total No. of years.

Tom99

[FONT=Verdana, sans-serif]Just assuming you got permission to dig up the grave and you find an urn of ashes, what will you do with them?[/FONT]

SevenOfNine

This will have been done without the permission of the local council (as this seems to be a local authority cemetery, not church property).

Graves cannot be 'opened' without the permission of the person who holds the burial rights (full graves & cremation plots), even then, councils don't allow any Tom, Di ck or Harry relative to dig a hole & put other family members in willy nilly.

Only once permission had been sought & given, & there would certainly be written records of that, the council will open the grave to the appropriate depth (shallower than the first body burial or ashes interment) & they'll charge the appropriate fee for doing so.

Personally, I'd have a conversation with the 'suspects', tell them you need to know if they have done anything without asking because the headstone has shifted, forcing digging & levelling to be scheduled. That you'd hate to think that their loved one may be there without your knowledge & therefore their ashes could very well end up in a skip.

At the moment, you haven't lost additional burial rights to add xxx number of loved ones to this grave. The only ones in it are the ones permission has been given for, those done on the sly without the knowledge of the rights owner don't count, & their ashes don't have to be respected.

Bit sad though, for both sides of this.

PS any trees in the vicinity - the roots burrow everywhere & could have cause disturbance to the stone.

Brynsam

dori2o wrote: »

I also see many quotes of considering the feelings of those who may have wrongly interred a person in a grave belonging to someone else. How about the feelings of those who actually own the grave?

The quotes don't necessarily refer to the feelings of those who may or may not have wrongly added remains to the grave without permission. Opening a grave, particularly if it does not provided the answers you seem to be seeking, is going to distress the grave owners just as much. The only people who definitely won't be bothered either way are the dead ones - hence references to having concerns for the living.

nom_de_plume

dori2o wrote: »

This movement has not only just happened. It was noticed around 3-4 years ago not long after the enquiries were made regarding adding the ashes, in an urn (so not scattered), and have gotten worse since than.

The area that has sunk is approx 1m by 0.5 m directly in front of the stone.

A few years ago I arranged for some ashes to be intered in a family grave. The ashes were in a small wooden box and a small hole was dug under the side of the grave border stone. I would describe the hole as being not disimilar to a fox hole and certainly nothing of a size that would creat the subsidence as suggested above. I doubt it was deeper than 12 " either.

unforeseen

dori2o wrote: »

The area that has sunk is approx 1m by 0.5 m directly in front of the stone.

Subsidence that size sounds more like part of a coffin lid has collapsed.

dori2o

If the ashes are there they will be interred properly and correctly marked on the grave papers.

When speaking to the stone mason about the repair to the stone they said they will need to level the land and dig down slightly to reset the stone on a proper foundation because of how the land lies.

The last thing we want is what has already been alluded to, if the urn or whatever hasn't been dug down far enough and is revealed when the stone is repaired/resited, and the additional work we intend to do is done, i.e. putting a small border around the front of the grave with a couple of small square granite flower pots (the kind that have grave pots in them).

Ashes should be places approx 18 inches down per the information we were given when our daughters ashes were interred.

We were told this as we chose our own urn from a 3rd party and not the recommended vendors of the council. and were told not to buy anything too tall because of this. (It also had to be checked for suitability by the LA).

Contact with the 3rd party involved has been attempted several times but no response has been forthcoming.

YoungBlueEyes

Without putting too fine a point on it - and I'm assuming you aren't worried about an extra coffin having been placed in there - I don't see how ashes scattered in to whatever depth would result in that size of dip. If it was the whole urn that was added, well wouldn't that produce a lump rather than a dip...?

The tree roots post is a good one. My mother's grave has had to be sorted out and relevelled etc twice in the 23 years she's been laid there. The tree is approx 6 ft away from her.

badmemory

I wonder why anyone adding to a grave would actually remove earth to this extent & indeed where they would put the removed earth as its presence on another grave would be noticable.


Whilst someone may possibly have added to the grave the dip is far more likely to have been caused by either dead tree roots or the coffin collapsing. Surely if someone wanted to inter ashes there the last thing they would want is for it to be noticed & lead to them being removed.

Faith177

My dads stone went up in 91 and has had to be fixed twice in that time due to settlement the first time it was just his that had failed the next time was 2-3 others near his effected as well. Have you had anyone look at the stone to suggest what might have caused it